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I'm studying ancient history again, here's some funny stuffff - bigcat1969 - 01-30-2019
When Europeans started exploring North Africa near the Mediterranean coast, they found many massive stone structures.There two tall stone columns pointed skyward with a short stone connecting the two on top. This reminded them of Stonehenge. Some of these structures were close together and all had a flat stone at the base with grooves. This led to several highly successful books about ancient heathen cults that featured human sacrifice since the flat stones with grooves were manifestly for the blood of the victims to be carried away. Someone finally asked a Mediterranean farmer about these Stonehenge like cult objects and he said, "Oh you mean the old Roman olive presses?"
The very first written documents were tax records. This makes sense when you consider that early towns were basically leeches on the food supply of farmers. Taxes would have had to proceed governments. To the early farmers tax collectors and bandits would have been synonymous. This explains why the first ever written recipe was how to make beer.
In the mid 1800s in India, British railway engineers needed solid material to lay the rails on. The local folk told them about an abandoned city with lots of old mud bricks. The Brits happily used them to lay 93 miles of track. Later it was discovered that these were 4,000 year old bricks from a completely unknown civilization that might have been larger than ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt or China. So vast portions of one of the most important archeological sites in the world were destroyed for track ballast.
'Help a historian, burn down a library'. This is an aphorism rarely seen at your local book repository. Yet several of the best textual finds in place like Mesopotamia and Greece have been because of ancient fires. The writing was done on mud or clay tablets and when the building they were in caught fire, the tablets were baked and survived for millennium.
Before the great dark age of Greece, there was a script used that defied all attempts to translate it. Finally a clever young man wondered if it was the same language as later Greek, but using a different alphabet. He was right. The Greeks had forgotten how to write and read, but they still spoke and used the same language as their forefathers and foremothers. When they decided to take up literacy again they just borrowed the Phonetician alphabet and assigned their sounds to the new letters. With this discovery in hand translators excitedly set to work only to find out that all the old tablet contained were long lists of possessions and land. Yup once again the ancient writing was used for tax records. Oddly we know the name of a cow, but not the name of any of the ancient kings.
Athen's main governing body was chosen by luck once a year. There were 10 'tribes' and each drew stones from a jug type thingie and the the ones that got the black stones ruled along with 499 other 'lucky' winners. Could it be any worse than Congress here in the US? That is more or less true anyway, there seem to be conflicting accounts of how people were chosen by lot, and at times it seems 1000 were chosen and 100 elected and all 1100 put in a poll for government jobs including the 500 person council. Still odd either way.
RE: I'm studying ancient history again, here's some funny stuffff - Nayrb - 01-31-2019
it's not ancient history, but did you know that tea was smuggled out of China by a British botanist disguised as a Chinese person? Before that it was export only and even then only black tea.
RE: I'm studying ancient history again, here's some funny stuffff - Samulis - 01-31-2019
Speaking of 'boring old clay tablets'... you might enjoy this talk (and other talks on this channel) about how they recorded taxes and debts in ancient Mesopotamia. They were using Excel 1.0 by the looks of the lines on the tablets!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPuI5ky0gW0
RE: I'm studying ancient history again, here's some funny stuffff - bigcat1969 - 01-31-2019
Didn't know that Nayrb. I knew that silk was a closely guarded secret for years but not tea.
Thanks Sam! I subscribed, looks like a cool channel.
RE: I'm studying ancient history again, here's some funny stuffff - Mattias Westlund - 01-31-2019
Thanks for posting this bigcat, a lot of both funny and interesting facts there. I've actually also been reading up on the Roman Empire and ancient Greece lately and many sources are really dry and dull. It's anecdotes like this that make reading about history more enjoyable and relatable.
RE: I'm studying ancient history again, here's some funny stuffff - bigcat1969 - 01-31-2019
Hey Mattias. I'm not sure why but yesterday or the day before I got a certain yen for ancient history and specifically Greece/Rome. I tend to like the Great Courses and other lecture series, but I should do some reading as well, so I'm glad you mentioned that. Any recommendations on books in that area?
Legend has it that when a previous Persian Emperor was murdered, Darius and a couple other claimants decided to leave it to the Gods / luck to decide the next Emperor so they all got up on their horses and decided that when the sun rose whoever's horse neighed first was the new King of the World. Darius's groom had secretly used a cloth (or maybe his hands) to get the smell of Darius stallion's favorite mare and got this scent up close the the horse's nose. The horse reared and neighed like anything. Darius never forgot his groom.
Another legend has it that for a time a magician pretended to be the man next in line to the throne and he ruled for a short time before his real identity was discovered. Which mostly goes to show that all legends aren't to be trusted.
RE: I'm studying ancient history again, here's some funny stuffff - Mattias Westlund - 01-31-2019
(01-31-2019, 09:42 PM)bigcat1969 Wrote: Hey Mattias. I'm not sure why but yesterday or the day before I got a certain yen for ancient history and specifically Greece/Rome. I tend to like the Great Courses and other lecture series, but I should do some reading as well, so I'm glad you mentioned that. Any recommendations on books in that area?
I've only been reading what I can find online, really. There are probably some great books on those topics but sadly I can't recommend any. I have some grasp of both Rome and Greece since before (like, the broad strokes) but there's also a lot of gaping holes in my knowledge especially when it comes to technical/practical things. How did you actually go about administrating such a behemoth of a society in primitive times? It's not like you could email a PM to all provincial magistrates and go, "OK guys, you need to watch out for [insert revolutionary movement], they're causing a lot of trouble here. Just a heads-up."
(01-31-2019, 09:42 PM)bigcat1969 Wrote: Legend has it that when a previous Persian Emperor was murdered, Darius and a couple other claimants decided to leave it to the Gods / luck to decide the next Emperor so they all got up on their horses and decided that when the sun rose whoever's horse neighed first was the new King of the World. Darius's groom had secretly used a cloth (or maybe his hands) to get the smell of Darius stallion's favorite mare and got this scent up close the the horse's nose. The horse reared and neighed like anything. Darius never forgot his groom.
Darius, he fought Alexander the Great (and lost) IIRC. That's a good -- though probably fictional -- anecdote
RE: I'm studying ancient history again, here's some funny stuffff - bigcat1969 - 01-31-2019
If you ever get the urge to watch lectures on these sorts of things and have a stray $30, you can google around and find a three month membership to the greatcoursesplus.com for $30. They have some interesting stuff, to me anyway, about ancient history. You can hit the site and look around without paying, though definitely find the sale as it is too costly otherwise. Also Sam's suggestion leads to some other cool history youtube channels which have the advantage of being free.
Yeah administering ancient 'world' empires was an amazing problem. The Romans really were the first true successes I think as the other empires tended to fall apart fairly quickly. Maybe China did it just as well? The Mesopotamian empires never seemed to last and a decent empire never would have fallen to Al the Grape who was outnumbered tons to one. Egypt did OK but was in a vacuum. No one know about the Indus valley but again somewhat separated and mostly one people group. Al might have done pretty well, but we will never know.
PG rated story. The night before an Athenian fleet was to leave for an invasion of Sicily under the command of pretty wild boy Alcibiades, there was shocking vandalism in Athens. Many houses had a 'statue' of Hermes out front. This was the head of Hermes on a block of stone with his err junk carved out of the block of stone toward the bottom. This was believed to be good luck. So the night before the fleet is to sale, someone runs all over Athens and knocks off the personal bits of all these statues. The fleet leaves and the outraged statue owners get the government to recall Alcibiades thinking he committed this outrage. Now at the same time Athens was sending off vast numbers of men and equipment for a pointless siege, they were at war with Sparta. Alcibiades defects to Sparta and says hey go whack Athens, I got them to send all the ships away.
The fleet is now under the command of a suspicious old man and they fail miserably for a year. They are about to go home when there is an eclipse and the old guy demands that they stay for 3 times 9 days to propitiate the sun god or some such. The fleet is destroyed. The Spartan's take Al's advice and kick Athen's butt. So Hermes' little hermes change the course of history.
RE: I'm studying ancient history again, here's some funny stuffff - Mattias Westlund - 01-31-2019
The Mongols conquered a large chunk of the world as well, but comparatively speaking (i.e. Rome) it didn't last that long. Probably only up until the point other peoples realized that "oh, OK, you can use horses and bows in battle, wow, we need to try that!" Kind of the same effect as the introduction of firearms. It's sad and creepy how closely warfare and development of technology are related.
RE: I'm studying ancient history again, here's some funny stuffff - Nayrb - 02-01-2019
Two books by Tom Holland would cover a bit of ancient Greece (and Darius) and Rome: Persian Fire and Rubicon respectively. Both are magnificent page turners for history books.
Back to tea: It played a really big role in history. The book about the botanist who stole a tea plant in a box is called For All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose and is also a very entertaining read. Another interesting book about drinks in history is A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage.
All definitely fall into the category of "popular history" in that they are written to be entertaining as well as educational. That's an important caveat because there will be some bits that seem sensational or that might make you think, "wait, that doesn't sound quite right..." But that's what the bibliographies are for. Sorry, I'm just one of those "scholarly" types...