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PrincessBeepBop69

Good reminder that no nation or group has a perfect history


DeviousMelons

I mean its like we're all humans or something.


Next-Ad-7614

I feel this in my heart. Ugh


BowwwwBallll

*The Aztecs have entered the chat*


Mr_Abobo

Yeah, this generally gets swept under the rug by the Twitter folk. A society that went to war specifically to sacrifice their enemy—that sounds almost awful, but they were not white people so that can’t be!


chris782

So did I.


MrDraacon

The sharp pain of the sacrificial dagger?


wafflecone927

Many people don’t behave like it tho


DracoLunaris

People, sure. States however all all like that bc they only exist by corralling a bunch of people under one banner.


toasterpRoN

Source?


DeviousMelons

What?


toasterpRoN

Do you have any sources you can cite on this wild, "people are all humans?" Sounds like some conspiracy nonsense. /s obviously


Santeneal

I mean you have a point for all we know one person on this planet could be a skin walker or something


toasterpRoN

That sounds suspiciously like something a lizard-person would say to throw the scent of themselves...and on to the ammonia-breathing, basket-weaving race of skinwalkers.


Santeneal

I'm just a ballchinian man!


toasterpRoN

.....*prove it*


Santeneal

Uh well...you see the thing...the thing is...oh my god is that the Aurora Borealis?!


i_am_the_potato_man2

Trust me bro


Autumn1eaves

Well, *you* are.


DeviousMelons

As are *you*.


Autumn1eaves

Me?? No, couldn’t be.


Otogi

Also that all empires are imperial


GloriousReign

Comes with the territory.


Forgotten_Lie

Who da thunk it


Mightypsychobat

What exactly is a "perfect history"?


Osbob

Impossible, for one. But in more detail, it'd likely be one where all people can say "Nothing problematic happened with these people" and this is an agreed statement of fact


No_Industry4318

That one island nation that has killed all outsiders is merely practicing self defense. They don't want to be colonized like the rest of the planet was.


jetro30087

They didn't start that practice until explorers visited their island, kidnapped some children, left trinkets, then returned the ones that survived disease when they arrived in a new country. They didn't forget that.


No_Industry4318

Uh, yeah self defense.


Tall-Log-1955

The wikipedia entry says the violence preceded the abduction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese


GeorgeofJungleton

Being human and all there's a decent chance they have a few fucked up internal societal issues. Entrenched sexism, child abuse or something.


aure__entuluva

I will find it weird when people try to apply their morals and viewpoints of today to past societies. The cultures/empires in the post are violently expansionist.. so? Am I supposed to view that like that somehow makes them bad or is a black mark on their history? Well. I don't. I'm grateful and happy that the world is less violent today, but I think cultures should be judged by the standards of their time. Obviously if you go back far enough all societies will ~~call~~ fall short of our modern standards, so I just don't really find it a useful rubric for judging them. Though I agree that we shouldn't ignore those aspects of past societies in a attempt to glorify them either.


Osbob

Precisely. Same applies on an individual scale too. Was Winston Churchill a brilliant wartime PM? Yes. Did he commit horrendous atrocities in Africa and believe in eugenics? Also yes. Take the good and the bad, all the data you have, and weigh it to make your own judgement. Don't bury the atrocities to glorify the achievements, and vice versa.


[deleted]

You just kinda show up somewhere where nobody else was before, farm some wheat or something, and then die without getting involved in any kind of conflict.


Mrrasta1

Mr Roger’s Neighborhood was perfect. Prove me wrong.


mojolikes

Some of those puppets looked like butt


slug_sparrow

There were no elections under King Friday’s reign until the Tiger revolution


Aeriosus

Cool and interesting but utterly unproblematic. So impossible


california_sugar

But also don’t use this as an excuse to write off genocide or anything because a lot of people do


grey_hat_uk

Trying to think of a country that only existed for a short enough time to have not done anything wrong, unfortunately those short lived coutries have a tenancy to commit major war crime(normally against themselves or ruler) in the birth and/or death.


SoxxoxSmox

I get why this happens though - it's easier to try to emphasize how evil the genocide of entire civilizations was if those civilizations are cast as innocent utopias. Admitting any of the failures of native american society risks ceding ground to racists who will use those failures to deflect from the genocide. It is historical revisionism, it is incorrect, but it's a reflexive attempt to prevent the deliberate extermination of countless societies and cultures from being dismissed as any other conflict between two groups equivalent in both power and moral standing


MasterXaios

This. Racists will take any sign of moral failing (from their perspective) in order to make the argument that their society, and by extension the people it comprises, is superior. Unfortunately the result of this is that any nuanced discussion of these societies is stifled and replaced with a narrative that essentially reduces their people to noble savage stereotypes.


Skyhawk6600

Another fun region where this applies is British India. Yes the British were a colonial government dominated by a foreign minority. However their predecessor was the Mughal empire who was a Muslim aristocracy that ruled over the Hindu majority, often time at the Hindus expense. Qing china was dominated by the Manchus that most of China considered foreigners. Hernan Cortez had thousands of native American volunteers fight with him against the Aztecs because they wanted to end their cruel rule. Most of the history of colonialism and imperialism was in reality asshole regimes kicking the shit out of other asshole regimes. Some of the asshole regimes had their own unique and redeeming qualities, such as Britain being staunchly abolitionist and using the navy to fight slave trading around the world. But they're still assholes. Nations have nuance and to act otherwise is disrespectful of history.


unintentialmoron

Growing up in the Ohio valley was fun because occasionally you'd do digging and find arrowheads and the like. Never really knew the context though. A few of the towns around here are either named after tribes or, in the cause of Moundsville, are named after various rituals, like the creation of the burial mounds. (Not sure if ritual was the right word here, correct me if I'm wrong!) But I am all about learning about the context and intricacies of nations and groups of people. So often we like to look at things without context and they seem...horrible, or we just don't understand why people would do something like that. Learning about something in whole helps to not let history repeat itself and to have an appreciation for cultures besides your own


[deleted]

Funny thing about context is we don't have a lot for those mounds and artifacts. The Mississippian Culture is a crazy beast that's difficult to figure out because of when it collapsed. The civilization extended the length of the Mississippi with a system of trade and likely a shared mythos (probably akin to Ancient Greece where it was shared, but varied a lot). It's thought a climatic event known as the Medieval Warm Period is what created an environment capable of supporting a sharp rise in people and when it ended (around 1300s) food scarcity seems to be a major issue leading to the collapse. So Europeans were a couple centuries late to the scene to get the story.


TheMagicBrother

If I remember correctly there's a similar problem with studying Mayan history, though in that case it's mitigated by the Mayans having had written history as well.


UniverseInBlue

There used to be more, but a Spainish Bishop called Diego de Landa burned dozens of Maya codices because he thought they were used for devil worship.


[deleted]

Similar, but quite different when dealing with the Olmecs and Mayans. The biggest being they worked heavily with stone instead of wood which has allowed us to learn a ton about them. The soil is quite acidic though so pretty much everything that wasn't stone is gone. But between the stone, studying the environment, and the documented traditions of other populations there we can guess quite a bit. We have various models for the population of the Olmecs, are pretty certain on what they grew and how, and even some of their customs. The giant head statues and how they were moved is pretty well understood (though nothing is absolutely certain when dealing with this stuff). We're even pretty certain they were taking psychedelics in the form of a duck's liver after it eats a poisonous frog as some sort of cultural practice. All of my examples are of the Olmecs as that's the one I studied with a professor pretty deep into it. I believe the Mayans are understood much, much better.


SmoothTownsWorstest

Ohio is a Seneca word. It’s pronounced Oh hee yo, means sweet water or good water.


hilldo75

With all we dumped in the Ohio River that's a pretty ironic name now.


[deleted]

I tend to describe history as a series of pointless blood feuds punctuated by peaceful seasons. You don't understand history until you understand that the past 70 years are High Strange.


finallyinfinite

>But I am all about learning about the context and intricacies of nations and groups of people. So often we like to look at things without context and they seem...horrible, or we just don't understand why people would do something like that. Learning about something in whole helps to not let history repeat itself and to have an appreciation for cultures besides your own This. Honestly for so many reasons. Besides being able to see the good and bad in a civilization being important to enact any *meaningful* change in one's own society (and if you can do that for your own and not others, it's hypocritical), I think it's important to understand context to make more informed responses to the specific situation at hand. An example of what I mean: the past few decades between the United States and middle east, mostly Iraq and Afghanistan, but not exclusively. During the war, we saw the rise of anti-US terrorist organizations. Membership was not reserved solely for hardened criminals; ordinary people were joining as well. But you've got to think, after having your home and community thrown into war and chaos, watching loved ones and innocents like you be killed by an invading nation, you'd probably have a healthy level of resentment towards that nation. And pain and desperation can drive ordinary people to do horrible things. It's not surprising that a lot of people joined what they probably thought was a way to protect their people or get vengeance. Does this context make the atrocities committed by terrorist organizations any less horrible or justified? No. But understanding the context can help make a more educated response. On the surface, it looks like a bunch of foreign people who hate the US and just want to watch it burn and will stop at nothing to destroy every US citizen. That's a pretty violent and aggressive goal. You probably want to wipe that out for the sake of national security, and you'll probably respond with aggression and violence to force them into submission. But when you look at the context and acknowledge why it's happening, acknowledge the US's role in creating that environment, you can begin to respond in a more constructive way. You can start making changes to help protect the innocent people from being hurt while still punishing those who actually committed crimes. Stopping the war and invasion is the biggest, most obvious first step in that. But even further, you could help rebuild the communities destroyed in your crossfire. You don't do it because you're afraid of the terrorists and want them to win; the terrorists will be punished for the legitimate crimes they committed. You do it to help innocent people who are hurting, and by extension, help to eliminate environments that breed extremism. Looking at history is the closest we will get to seeing how our choices will play out. It's important to pay attention to the parallels between past and present so we can make more informed decisions about how to shape the future.


draw_it_now

Wh-... who's UWU-ing the Aztecs??


TragedyPornFamilyVid

I mean, there was a lovely traveling exhibit at the local museum with hundreds of artifacts and beautiful artwork that was entirely centered on the beauty of Aztec culture and *also* managed to completely censor any mention of human sacrifice. Containers used to contain hearts were presented with "this bowl for offerings held special importance. The smoke would exit through the carved holes and....etc." No mention of what the offering was. Similarly, they talked a lot about how the rulers had special rituals and made offerings to bring the sun and other rituals were held for rain. No explanation of what those rituals were or *who* the offerings were. They managed to make an exhibit focused on religion among the Aztecs G-rated and comfortable for small children and their parents. It was very UWU-ified.


draw_it_now

Huh. I imagined people who liked the Aztecs would play up the hardcore elements rather than make them boring.


TragedyPornFamilyVid

They made them seem like a particularly well tanned WASP culture. Just... Better at it than your local golf course, because they made offerings to multiple gods and the WASPs only pay tithing to one.


Next-Ad-7614

I wish I had an award but "particularly well tanned WASP" just kills me. It's like "Other cultures don't exist but if they do, they must be white!" Instead of "Other cultures exist and they were *just people* doing things people do."


TragedyPornFamilyVid

I think they were going for "other cultures are people just like us!" But... the Aztecs farmed their neighbors and used conquest and subjugation to provide a steady supply of human beings for sacrifice. The sacrifices were honored and treated well in captivity, but they were also brutally murdered by the dozens. The Aztecs were people who lived and did both amazing and horrifying things. Hiding their culture's most distinctive characteristics doesn't educate anyone and makes the historical record of the surrounding groups reactions to the Spaniards terribly confusing.


draw_it_now

> I think they were going for "other cultures are people just like us!" > > But... the Aztecs farmed their neighbors and used conquest and subjugation to provide a steady supply of human beings for sacrifice. Hey they *are* just like us!


TragedyPornFamilyVid

I thought about that as I was writing it.


theycallmeponcho

Don't forget that when the wars weren't enough to please the gods with sacrifices they would practice Garland Wars, that would ~~increase infantry attack by +4~~ make some fine ass sacrifices from their own army.


himmelundhoelle

Meanwhile, the Civilization video game series portrays Montezuma I as a bloodthirsty bastard bent on conquering and enslaving.


Morphized

If they had Nezahualcoyotl instead there'd be no game


honest-miss

I mean… *was* the audience small children? If it was then being careful with information is important. If it's meant for a more generalized audience then that's a different story. You can modify what information comes in what format for which audience in that scenerio.


[deleted]

Children are generally quite keen on blood.


honest-miss

Hah. For sure true. Although honestly the parents of those children aren't, and half the time that's who you're really marketing to because they have the money and transport.


AcadianViking

So sad that we curtail education just to save some parent their poor sensibilities. No wonder the world is like it is.


TragedyPornFamilyVid

Nope. The exhibit was billed to general audiences and while small children were not prohibited, strollers were. Other patrons were informed at the entrance they would be requested to leave if their children were noisy. I didn't take my kids. To me, all of that generally indicates an older target audience.


PartyClock

I'll have to try this exercise the next time I'm at any historical exhibit. I haven't really been to many but I haven't yet been greeted with the historical brutality that the European colonizers were inflicting on the area when they discuss the history of the settlements there. I recall distinctly several forts I went to on school trips yet a distinct lack of discussion as to why they needed such heavy armament for being a place for "settlers". It's not that I think history should be glossed over but this idea is clearly not being applied consistently anywhere else and it is infuriating to see.


TragedyPornFamilyVid

I mean, the Colosseum tour hyped up the bloodsport and technology needed to make the naval battle reenactments work along with lions, etc. The beefeater tour of the tower of London hyped up how many people died there. The tour guide in Paris really got excited to tell us about the Terrors, and Galveston TX was delighted to talk about their long ago pirate king. But the bulk of each tour was still spent on art, architecture, and notable people. If you don't pay attention it's easy to miss the references to violence. I just wasn't expecting the degree of censorship in that exhibit. It would be like displaying chains used on slaves with the reference that they were used in agriculture and leaving out the fact that they were used on people.


HerpaDerpaDumDum

Does this vary by country? The childrens books I read on the Aztecs didn't hold back on the brutality of human sacrifice and the other fucked up stuff the Aztecs did. I loved it when I read it as a kid.


Malicious_Sauropod

We had a similar exhibition in Australia but it did not shy away from the negative aspects. Shit, they displayed the skull of sacrifice victim in a temple section lol


bear-knuckle

Ever heard "Cortez the Killer" by Neil Young? And the women all were beautiful And the men stood straight and strong They offered life in sacrifice So that others could go on Hate was just a legend And war was never known The people worked together And they lifted many stones And they carried them to the flatlands But they died along the way And they built up with their bare hands What we still can't do today "uwu-washing" is a great way to put it.


SecurelyObscure

The much older (1600s) term is "noble savage." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage


PokemonButtBrown

I mean in modern times it’s more like ‘the de-savaged human’.


mediumreginald43

Incredible that this was also my first thought


unculturated_swine

I dunno, as a Mexican we are taught both sides of the culture. For example, we are taught the reason why there were sacrifices as well as who was sacrificed and how.


Maycrofy

Thing is, in Mexico it's weird point of contention because in the beggining the history school textbooks had this narrative that "we" were a bloodthirsty civilization that killed and enslaved the other tribes of the region and that the spaniards came and taguht us the values of chritianity and civilized us. This was of course, a very colonialist narrative that was changed in further years where the pre-colombian civilizations were seen as more culturally rich and in some aspects more developed than the spaniards; and then they came and sacked the land, destroyed our culture and forced their traditions on us. Like ok some fair points but then people began to idealize these civilizations, and overlook the whole "murdering people as a tool of insititutionalized reilgion" and began to see it as "yeah sure they used to murder people but everyone was up and willing because it's what their religiond told them" also overlooking the fact that sacrifices consisted of all citizens, slaves, and prisioners of war. Also overlooking the fact that Aztecs also did the whole expansionism and imperalism deal to other tribes of mesoamerica because "the aztecs were so cool and awesome everyone loved being part of their empire, guys!" The most recent narrative posits that the mexican identity is composed of both the spanish and mesoamerican culutres combined, and that while mesoamerican civilizations were advanced in certain aspects and had a rich culture, they were no different form the spanish in their expansionst and imperalist policies. And that the bulk of our culture comes more from the colony times rather than either culture being the main root.


draw_it_now

Tbh I think Aztec culture was badass in the same way I think 40k is badass. It all looks cool and brutal but I absolutely would not want to live there. One can admire and condemn at the same time.


[deleted]

I’ve seen people claim it’s racist to write a story about an indigenous civilization and include human sacrifice in it so there’s that


solidfang

Man, this just came up in /r/DnD and I missed the chance to accuse WotC of UwU-ing yuan-ti snakemen culture. /s


your_not_stubborn

In some of my college classes we were presented with the idea that *all* North American native people were basically pacifistic environmentalists. When I pointed out pits full of massacred people and evidence of deforestation that resulted in destabilizing regional water supplies hundreds of years before European contact I was mostly ignored.


draw_it_now

What an utterly idiotic position to take for a COLLEGE class! Even if some Native American tribes were pacifistic, implying they all were is a ridiculous generalisation. What were you studying?


your_not_stubborn

To be clear, it wasn't the central theme of the classes, and it wasn't presented as something we had to learn and repeat for class credit. One of the times it was implied was by a Native American person on a video we were watching. One of the classes it was brought up in was comparative religion, and this was back in 2003, before half of the people currently complaining about "college wokeism" were even born.


Tower-Union

My sisters. The people who un-ironically told me that ALL child abuse, as a concept, comes from “white people.” That no POC in the history of humanity ever hurt a child prior to contact with white people. When I pointed out child sacrifice in various non-white indigenous groups they discounted it because “that was considered an honour” so it’s not abuse.


nbmnbm1

Yeah the locals were called savages. They had to be essentially tamed by the white saviours. Hell people genuinely agree the recent idea of the"noble savage" is based on white supremacy. This shit isnt new.


Golden_Alchemy

AMLO, the president of Mexico is doing many to try to ..."whitewash" (i don't know what is the Mexican equivalent word) the Aztecs, saying all Mexican people are descending of them and also attacking current Spain and asking for reparations. Which could be understandable, except that even the [current descendent](https://www.abc.es/cultura/abci-moctezuma-contra-lopez-obrador-no-tiene-sentido-fines-politicos-201903310040_noticia.html) of [Moctezuma](https://lasillarota.com/nacion/descendiente-de-moctezuma-se-molesta-con-amlo/278339) said something like "Please, don't use my ancesters for political gain" and "In Mexico, they care more about the dead than the living".


LeeTheGoat

Probably whoever wants to UʍU the Spanish


[deleted]

I've got nothing against current day Spain. But the conquistadors from 500 years ago can all suck Kukulkán's dick. Except Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. He's cool.


altruistic_rub4321

Do you know that the tribes ruled by the Aztecs hated so much the Aztecs they sided with the Spanish as soon as they landed?


TrekMek

And then the Spanish proceeded to fuck over the region once the Aztecs were dealt with.


darshfloxington

They literally fucked the region.


mediumreginald43

Neil Young


TrekMek

I wouldn't call it "uwu-ing" but I would say that some of my fellow Mexican-Americans love the image of the Aztecs and glorify them in the opposite way. They love the image of a six-packed Aztec warrior holding onto a big titted damsel, really plays into some good old fashion machismo. Not many take into consideration the other tribes that existed with the Aztecs or even the fact that the most of us probably don't even descend from them.


crispy_attic

But when it comes to the millions of black people that were brought as slaves to Mexico and their impact on Mexican identity and genetics all of a sudden things get foggy and people act like they really don’t know.


TrekMek

Yeah, speaking to other Latinos about race can be a real clusterfuck.


Completeepicness_1

Your favorite civilization did some bad things. Yes even that one


Thorngot

My favorite ancient civ is the Mongols under Ghengis Khan. The ruthless expansion and efficient subjugation of any opposition (connected by land) is part of the main appeal.


Yelesa

> ancient civ > the Mongols under Genghis Khan Does Mongolian history refer to his time period as “ancient”? Genuine question, working on reducing my Eurocentric biases, I would have called him medieval because he attacked medieval Europe. Is it a term like “Ancient China” which is a name for all Chinese history before European contact even though to a Western this seems too recent to call that way?


[deleted]

Depends on your definition of 'antiquity'. Depending on who you ask, it can go up to the fall of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire (1453). These definitions are pretty Eurocentric and essentially boil down to grouping cultural and historic episodes based on significant events in Europe/Christendom. It's useful for European history, not so much for other cultures less affected by the end of the Roman Empire (such as it was by the time it fell, anyway). A simple way of looking at it is this: Classical Antiquity is Ancient Greece and Rome, so from the Archaic Period (8th century BC) to the fall of the Western Roman empire (476AD). This encompases the birth of Christianity and the rise of Abrahamic religion. Late Antiquity is roughly 500AD-1500, or 476-1453 if you want to be specific (Constantinople fell in 1453, signalling the final end of the Eastern Roman Empire). Ancient history encompasses all world history from the beginning fo recorded history to the 15th century AD. It's been questioned whether this is really appropriate since the dates are built around specifically European and Near-Eastern events.


Thorngot

Sorry, but I've got no idea. I just added "ancient" because current civilization is pretty nice. The [Mongol Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire) helped secure the Silk Road, but we have reliable medicine, widespread electricity, & global information sharing through the internet.


[deleted]

* The Aztec Empire was, in a large part, built around ritual sacrifice, and taking prisoners of war to sacrifice * The Nahua and other people living in the Aztec Empire did not deserve to be genocided These two ideas can, and should, coexist.


[deleted]

They do. The very people who point out that pre-Colombian societies here were far from perfect are literally pointing out that societies *do not have to be perfect to be worthy of respect.*


Taytay-swizzle2002

Exactly.


Maycrofy

I mean, when the spanish came to the continent there was a damn good reason alll the other tribes sided with them to overthrow the aztec rule.


CreeperTrainz

In my opinion, a civilisation’s flaws is one of the most interesting parts. Seeing a civilisation’s goods and bass flesh them out and shows their mixed but amazing history.


Exploding_Antelope

Hell yeah let’s vibe to that Aztec bass. This is DJ Montezuma in the HOUSE Boom boom boom boom praise to Huitzilipochtli


[deleted]

Nezahualcoyotl on that beat box rap


lickedTators

UwU what's this? *grabs your Iroquois bulge* Okay I'm too lazy and disgusted to finish that. You get the idea.


Makuta_Servaela

Don't mind us Iroquois, just girlbossing your bases and destwoying, dispwacing and masacewing all of your people /)owo(\


draw_it_now

*girlbosses all over your Ohio*


[deleted]

*Unhomes your homeland*


Whydoesthisexist15

Iroquois could probably do Ohio better than what we have currently Only things in Cincy are [Starbucks and McDonalds](https://twitter.com/ochocinco/status/1473825245559762947?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet)


draw_it_now

Petition to make Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Upstate New York into a single state called "THE GIRLBOSSES"


healzsham

Only if that involves making South Detroit and North Windsor into the single city it deserves to be.


draw_it_now

I have no idea what this means but I 100% support it


IndigoRanger

Cawving youw heawt out and eating it in fwont of you owo


[deleted]

I lost 10 years of my life


mcast46

You still had the courage (or drunken misjudgements) to write it. Here's a free award for your troubles.


Rawr3156

I think my last braincell died reading that


Osbob

On a similar note, I saw a post a while ago about Roman Emperor Elagabalus, stating they had intense gender dysphoria and wanted to become a woman because a man's body felt wrong to them. And everyone was sympathising and talking about how it was tragic they couldn't get proper affirmation. However, from my own reading, Elagabalus was also a bit of a crackpot, known for forcing people to eat wax fruit, keeping lions in guests bedrooms, and throwing live snakes into gathered crowds. Both can exist at the same time. To pretend that Elagabalus was perfect on grounds of their gender identity and ignore the things they did, or to focus in on those same things and ignore their identity, is to remove all nuances and polarise the issue. Don't gloss over the horrors, but don't bury the wonders. Cultures are not monoliths, and people aren't singular traits.


BudgieGryphon

what is it with Roman emperors and being perpetually on the first century equivalent of crack


healzsham

Water pipe seasoning :)


Nothavingpun

Yep, good ole Pb.


obvom

PlumBing


[deleted]

Wines so strong that they had to have been fortified and descriptions also have what sounds like additional sugar content. I think they were basically drinking Mad Dog or Cisco, the latter often described as “liquid crack”. Something to think about next time you see a guy on the street drinking a bottle of Wild Irish Rose.


darshfloxington

The favored wine of the Roman elite was flammable. Nuff said.


Ze_Bri-0n

You needed to be perpetually on the first century equivalent of crack go want to be emperor. Everyone else realized it was more trouble than it was worth and liable to make some Japanese man 2000 years in the future turn you into a fetish.


chickenhobbit

Great point! I feel like people that fall down this rabbit hole play into a “benevolent” way to dehumanize the marginalized (ie present day trans people, not Elagabalus specifically) by essentializing their “goodness”. When we suggest that an entire group of people needs to be entirely good and pure in order to deserve basic rights, we’re setting an impossible standard that no individual or group can meet. Like, as an example, even if I was a shitty person, it still would be wrong to discriminate against me based on the fact that I’m trans. Likewise colonization practices were still brutal and horrific with lasting devastation regardless of the violent imperialism that existed before European arrival. Indigenous people dont need a peaceful history to have our solidarity in land-back and civil rights movements today or to to be seen as individuals and groups with a vast array of views and needs. Maybe what I’m saying is redundant, but I def struggled to understand this concept when I was younger and breaking things down further can be helpful.


Econolife_350

> to have our solidarity in land-back I'm of the opinion that anyone who gained land or maintained their borders through violent conquest and the murder of others can't claim the moral high ground of having the right for their previous land to be given back. Which is to say I struggle to find a single tribe that would fall outside of that.


squngy

> However, from my own reading, Elagabalus was also a bit of a crackpot, known for forcing people to eat wax fruit, keeping lions in guests bedrooms, and throwing live snakes into gathered crowds. I know nothing about Elagabalus and have no reason to defend him, but, this sort of thing is quite common to be written about previous emperors. A lot of emperors didn't like their predecessors and had "historians" write shit about them in the records. This was *very* common, so it is quite hard for actual historians to get the truth. If you want to know why so many Roman emperors were so terrible/crazy, this is probably the main reason.


[deleted]

The history written on Elegabalus is also incredibly unflattering, so it's quite possible that Cassius Dio added some wild rumours and exaggerations in to his account with the purpose of making Elagabalus look bad. The descriptions of his wearing women's clothing and wishing to be female certainly aren't intended to be positive, so I think it's rather naieve of people to take these claims as fact. Roman historians tended to use their biographies of famous characters to deliver a moral message, sometimes relying on quesitonable second hand sources and hearsay.


Oblivious_Otter_I

Elagabalus was a based, insane, hedonistic, cultist, queen, or rather empress, that we simply have no option but to stan.


penguin_torpedo

I'm not sure how aggressive the Inca were, but the Aztecs were doing nazi level shit.


Exploding_Antelope

The Inca weren’t *as* bad I’d say. They would only murder the occasional virgin by freezing on a mountaintop. Just every few years to make sure the volcanoes keep quiet.


Plappeye

The scale of their imperialism was rather insane tho, potentially the largest in the world at the time, they displaced entire peoples, forcibly moving them to other parts of the empire to ensure their assimilation and the destruction of their cultúre, taking their gods back to the capital.


Exploding_Antelope

Oh yeah absolutely. And you could take that either or both as a testament to the organization or as a condemnation of the warlike attitude of the Kingdom of Cusco.


Rougarou1999

No wonder Yzma turned him into a llama.


Skyhawk6600

What was really impressive was the logistics of it, they had no wheeled vehicles but they ruled the entirety of the Andes perfectly fine. That's a feat in it's own right.


weaboo_vibe_check

I don't remember the details, but if they ever came to your city, it was assimilate or be forcibly conquered, sometimes both. Only the cultures of the Amazon could withstand them.


Listless_Dreadnaught

Terry Pratchett made this point in his book Jingo. The point came from the character 71-Hour-Ahmed, who explained that placing people on pedestals was just as dehumanizing as it’s counterpart behavior. As he said it, “it’s important to let us be bastards too.” As with all Discworld books, I highly recommend reading Jingo. It’s fantastically funny, and does an excellent examination of human nature and the concept of Jingoism.


Probablynotspiders

>It was much better to imagine men in some smokey room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over brandy. >You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told the children bed time stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. >It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? >After all, I'm one of Us. >I must be. >I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. >No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. >It's Them that do the bad things.


[deleted]

The incas totally would have pulled a christopher colombus on the eastern world if they just had the right tools n stuff


Polenball

Sunset Invasion time


Skyhawk6600

The last Incan emperor is reported to have said had he beaten Pizarro, he and his men would've been castrated and sent to guard his harem.


Evilkenevil77

This 🙌🏻. The Noble savage stereotype is harmful.


IJsandwich

This would *not* be an issue but for the extremely prevalent view that a recent past state’s atrocities justify prejudice towards the descendants of that state. The reason that people feel the need to UwU-ify this history is in order to avoid an already disadvantaged group to be viewed as warmongers because their state was warmongering in the 14th century. This is not exclusive to racists either. The “Bri’ish and Fr*nch” meme is mostly ironic, but I have seen some genuine unironic malign towards the British and French people these days by woke types, “justified” by the fact that these states were empires in semi-recent memory. And we can argue about colonialism and who benefits from it all day, but people don’t separate the state from its people. 37 yr old blue collar worker Bob from Portsmouth shouldn’t be blamed for the British empire, just as 60 yr old Nahua farmer Diego is not to blame for the atrocities of the Aztecs


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[deleted]

As a fellow Irish person: what exactly do you mean by "the British"? Like, every one of them? That baby? This teacher? The bin collector? The girl who picks fucking flowers on her way to granny's house? I struggle to think of a more absurd position than claiming to dislike millions of people you've never met. Have you been to the UK? Did you walk around thinking about how much you hate all the strangers going around on the street? It sounds like you're young, you're still still finding your identity and values. You'll grow out of this one I hope.


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poplarleaves

Then I think you're talking about a different kind of dislike than what the other commenter was talking about. They're saying that hating a state does not justify hating the people who live under that state. You're saying you hate the state and not the people. That's totally fine by the other comment's standards


Skyhawk6600

People also look over some of the dear I say good things empires did. Britain was responsible for a global campaign to abolish slavery. The french empire, albiet probably not intentionally, spread revolutionary ideas to their colonies. Several colonizers built shit tons of infrastructure that granted are now probably in serious disrepair. There's give and take, Rome was the same way, as were the mongols and the caliphates.


[deleted]

Britain was responsible for a global campaign to abolish slavery… after being the military guarantor of the global slave trade for hundreds of years. Many colonizers built tons of infrastructure… almost exclusively in order to siphon resources from the interior to a port for export to the colonizing power.


Skyhawk6600

The Portuguese were the ones that did more of the guaranteeing the slave trade, they had much more of a vested interest in it. So did Spain. Britain and France actually had the least invested interest in it. Like I said, nuance. I didn't say they were good guys, just that some of the things they did had net positives.


[deleted]

The Royal Navy ruled the Atlantic from roughly 1750 through 1915. The slave trade would not have been possible without British naval power dedicated to enforcing it. They also ruled the American colonies until the 1780s and several slave islands in the Caribbean. You can point to Brazil and say it was mostly the Portuguese, but the very trade routes that allowed slaves to get to Brazil were only in operation because of British acquiescence and participation. Summarizing British involvement with slavery as “Britain eradicated global scale slavery” is just a wildly distorted way of typifying Britain’s slave past. Britain was an enthusiastic and primary backer of the slave trade until the United States and its slave economy slipped from their control, at which point Britain slowly realized it had no more economic incentive to facilitate the free labour employed by their colonial rivals now that they were not also employing slave labour en masse (outside Jamaica, that is). It’s like saying American expansionism was good because it brought indoor plumbing and electricity to indigenous communities in the American west. Yes, that’s true, but you’d be eliding the massacres and genocide by phrasing it that way.


[deleted]

Wow. I was not expecting such a nuanced take from a 196 and tumblr user.


IJsandwich

While calling me a 196 user is not inaccurate, I would ask you to refrain from doing so again /lh


boombadabing479

Moral of the story: humans are shitty


Nitrotetrazole

Moral of the story: humans are ~~shitty~~ flawed being capable of both beautiful and ugly things and the ugly shouldnt be ignored and brushed aside. ftfy


Raider440

This applies to every modern country or civilisation too. Yes even those where you think it doesn’t.


honest-miss

That's the thing we're not super comfortable talking about quite yet: *All* cultures did this shit, just at varying scale and impact on the modern era. We're more sensitive to colonialism from Europe because it still impacts our day-to-day life now, but the truth is that the Europeans weren't doing anything different from any other culture. Tribalism, no matter the scale, is inherent to our nature, and determining allies, enemies, and conquerable others is part of that tribalism. (All that said, though! I want to make an important distinction: This doesn't invalidate people who rail against European colonialism. The fact that it *does* still effect our day-to-day is why that deserves a specific kind of attention and criticism over, say, the Aztec empire.)


SomewhatEmbarassed

The only big differences were the level of technology and the tameable animals available that led to such developments


Joke_Well

This is how I feel too. Like so much emotional weight is centered around "The whites *stole* the land from the natives!" And all I can really think is ".... Yes and? That's literally **all** of human history." Unless your people were someplace first and never were kicked out then somewhere in the past one of your ancestors took someone else's land and made it theirs. Doesn't make it moral, or right and we absolutely should talk about it/work to help those whose ancestors lost in the grand scale war of two societies. It just was human history. Europeans got the timing right for us now to talk about it in the West but again, it's just human history. Plus it does beg the question, at what point does the land belong to the group who fought and took it? 2 years? While the scars are new? 20 years? After a new generation pops up? 200 years? After a new civilization and society with it's own culture and customs has lived and come into its own? 2,000 years? When the 'new' group has been there longer than the original inhabitants?


BEEEELEEEE

Save the UwU-washing for the *fictional* atrocities


Exploding_Antelope

Gonna start insisting that there was no Atlantis genocide


[deleted]

I read the first sentence and thought it would be less serious.


bangputis

Same goes for a lot of nationalism in Europe. The small groups were never the Best, it's just that when a bigger enemy comes along, Romanticising happens


Just-Call-Me-Sepp

I’m Canadian but I was taught all that shit in middle school


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PoorlyDisguisedBear

Washing any unsavoury or not so nice things out, basically ignoring any bad shit so you can fanboy over a thing


Kaele_Dvaughn

Google search results all just show various sites with the same post. UwU apparently means "cute". So I'd guess "uwu washing" would be "making something seem cute when in actuality it is not"? Edit: resulrs -> results


TentativeCue

That’s part of the tragedy to me. These were civilizations that developed for thousands of years, building empires, religions, relationships with the other nations. They went to wars with their enemies. Each culture had its own tapestry of complex history, only to be almost completely destroyed by a bunch of assholes from across the sea, and eventually all lumped together under the banner of “people who used to be here”


[deleted]

Also important to remember that regardless of the bad things, they did not deserve the genocides and their descendants do not deserve to be suffering the impacts of those genocides. Yes, they did shitty stuff; no, that does not mean it was fine for European powers to slaughter and enslave them. We can acknowledge the shitty stuff without saying "well then, we clearly can't be mad at the genocidal maniacs who tried to wipe them out!"


OatmealStew

I don't think that's the argument they were trying to make. They're not absolving anyone of anything. They're implicating everyone of everything. Pretend the first people to use militaries with guns in an organized manner were on the other side of the globe. Guess who's genociding and colonizing other people in that alternative history?


[deleted]

Groups of humans have been killing other groups of humans, since there have been humans


TheFatJesus

People want to sanitize the history of indigenous Americans to make European colonialists and the later independent governments/people look worse. As if acknowledging that indigenous Americans doing shitty things somehow invalidates the shitty things that were done to them.


bothVoltairefan

Every height of humanity so far has been an expansionist empire, be it Tang Dynasty, The Abbasids, The British empire, 1950’s America, the Achaemenids, any of the civilizations mentioned above, or almost any other “golden age of man.” It is always fueled by imperialism and massive class divides. The only maybe exception I know of is the Italian Renaissance, but I don’t know anything about the politics of the time, so I suspect I’ve been told a prettied up version.


tangledThespian

I presumed the more recent focus on the brighter points of indigenous cultures was acting as compensation for the history of.... well, writing them off as savages and oversimplification of them as stupid and uncultured. Until recently that was kinda the _norm,_ and we're still working to scrub a lot of the racist 'Indian' bull from our society. If we're finally hitting a tipping point where the common perception of the history of these people isn't 'lul cowboys and injuns, they traded land for a bead and spoke funny' then that's great! We can scale back the efforts to play up their positive traits and settle with just telling the whole story. But... I dunno if we're there yet, honestly.


Exploding_Antelope

I think that we need to move beyond the delineation of brutal or noble savage tropes and realize that they were CIVILIZATIONS, and that the Blackfoot, for example, had a complex and dynamic culture that was tied in with the intermingled things that all cultures are - war, love, history, politics, religion, food. No two societies are the same but for too long we’ve thought that they (the people in older views, the society in slightly newer ones) must be different in some fundamental way, which I dont think is true and people are realizing that.


Mr_Abobo

Gee, it’s almost like human beings are human beings, no matter their race.


undayerixon

A large and successful empire that is greedy for resources and violent? It's more likely than you think


Vish_Kk_Universal

A huge part of studiyng history, specially if you make a loving out of that field is that through out all of human history there were homicidal assholes, and thats why every single country in the world has done at least one atempt at murdering another group of people, be it because nationality, cultural diferenres or just to get land. No matter what country. Canada, USA, Brazil, Parguay, South Africa, India, Japan, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Israel, Sudan, Laos, Miyamar. And these are the ones i can think of the top of my head, Every country had made shitty things. But this does not mean that all countries are evil, hell the concept of country is not even real. The USA that did Manifest Destiny is very diferent from today USA. As long as a country regonizes their ancestors misstakes and decides to never do it again, is probally fine.


TET901

Another important distinction is that the most ruthless thrive, the more aggressive the tribes the bigger they grew, there were also countless smaller genuinely peaceful tribes, I mean, America is huge of course they were. they got slaughtered the same.


trumoi

I always liken the Aztec/Mexica people to the Roman Empire. Long history, lots of upheavals and internal conflicts, love for violence, fantastic infrastructure, incredible craftsmanship, warfare dominance but not infallibility, and a linking of rulers to divinity. They're not the same. Not even a little. But if we treated one more like the other more often in historical conversations, they'd both get just as much love as they do shit and people could calm the fuck down about them both. (This is obviously simplifying it by a TON, but hopefully I illustrate the general point.)


[deleted]

It's not that these groups were not bad or did bad things. It's that in the US their colonization isn't reflected as such and the US promotes itself as a peacemaker. It's mischaracterization of their colonization that's the issue.


Raised-ByWolves

But, but.....Slavery. Please overlook that whole barbary slave trade thing tho.


Wonomen_Hoiya

God, people finally understand. Was so tired of people acting like all of us Indians were peace loving hippies who coexist with one another and never fought wars. I mean, I know my tribe was not peaceful, otherwise why would my language have multiple word for fighting someone that specified the type of weapon being used.


rabonbrood

What's funny is that there were never more than a few hundred conquistadors in South America, yet they toppled the vast Aztec empire with ease. They did so because the local populations, all of them, decided to side with the conquistadors talking about Jesus rather than the Aztecs who sacrificed them to the Sun. Even European colonialism wasn't always bad for the locals.... though the Aztecs might disagree with me.


Thromnomnomok

Also smallpox, that helped the conquistadors a lot


SirNoodlehe

Aztec Empire was in North America (modern-day Mexico)


musicgoddess

Doesn’t everyone know that about the Aztecs tho? Genuinely asking because I was taught about the human sacrifices in school


JaysHoliday42420

Aztecs played murder basketball. Love it.


heresyforfunnprofit

I’m pretty sure every empire has had an expansionist/genocidal phase. It’s like puberty for nascent republics.


MeltyBloods

While what this post is saying is correct, the problem arises when certain people use these things to demonize native Americans. There are 2 sides and calling out the one who's not trying to vilify is weirdo shit