What historical events prove humanity hasn't fundamentally changed in the last 10k years?
…but only one person gets to talk about ea nasir’s yelp ratings.
They can be cool, inspiring events, or funny/dumb ones idc. I’m just looking for stories that make you go “I could see that happening in Jersey” or “My cousin caught a charge for that just last week!”
Every time footage of a cop lynching a Black person makes it to the 24/7 news cycle as compared to the Philadelphia MOVE bombing as compared to the burning of Greenwood as compared to the intentional downing of Field Order 15 and Reconstruction as a whole as compared to the practice of the Triangle trade/American implementation of chattel slavery.
The idea that the only way to for us to settle disputes or disagreements with others is to organize ourselves into competing camps, make fancy plans and use all our technical knowledge and technology to kill one another.
Our ancient prehistorical ancestors had the same logic thousands of years ago and used sticks, spears, rocks and their bare hands.
Today, we use drones, machine guns, army tanks, naval ships and nuclear weapons.
The technology has changed … but our mentality is still the same.
In 1976, Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother died. A flight from Israel to Paris had been hijacked by some Palestinian and German terrorists, and flown to Uganda, where they demanded release of prisoners, threatening to kill the Israeli and Jewish passengers (the rest were released). Israel decided to launch a mission on foreign soil to rescue them, and I think Bibi’s older brother was the sole Israeli casualty.
What we are seeing today in Gaza is most likely, mostly, as a direct result of that death. Raw caveman emotion. (with a few decades of carefully layered public relations)
[now I’m going to go upvote all the heart-warming examples of human kindness in this thread]
They found a skeleton that dates before writing was invented (like way before). The skeleton had a broken bone that heeled. Which means that someone was taking care of them. So before writing was invented human have already established a society that allowed for supporting of the weak.
I’m going to be a pedant and note that recorded history is only ~6k years old, for those parts of the world that had by then started writing shit down in non-perishable form (at the time, or at least before the spoken memories were lost forever). And much shorter for others, obv.
This question is difficult to frame accurately, but “events from BCE” might work, if you want examples that occurred multiple thousands of years ago.
In 1945, Oppenheimer pioneered the quest for the creation of the atomic bombs. His defense was it’s “the weapon to end all wars” supposedly by the fear inspired by its sheer power. Looking back, you can find such eerily similar moments where this defense is littered throughout the course of human history in response to several different things. So even if unintentional, it’s definitely BS.
Never underestimate how much the ruling class is just frothing at the mouth for war. We could destroy the planet and everything living on it several times over. The only evidence of humanities existence may one day be a few rovers on Mars and a ring of fine dust and plastic orbiting the sun.
There's a minor fortification somewhere, I think it was roman. Outside the walls they found a fawn skeleton, fully articulated, with no butchery marks and a broken leg that had healed a bit before death. Nearby is the fully articulated skeleton of a cat.
The thinking is that a soft hearted soldier, child or spouse found a fawn with a broken leg. They tried to nurse it back to health and when it died they buried it near their cat.
I love how many dicks have been drawn in historical artifacts by the people who built them. I remember reading about an engraving at the very top of an old column which the building was too unstable to get close enough to see for a long time. I think when they got up there and translated it it said something like “this is very high”. It’s nice to know people have always been people.
A lot of archaeological dicks are apotropaic - they ward off evil. Some are for fertility of course. Today I feel like it's often seen as a minorly transgressive act, drawing something 'rude'. It's so fascinating that we keep doing the same thing and just change what we say it means.
That’s bollocks. Whoever claimed that people used to draw dicks to ward off evil was talking out of their ass to make a dick pic seem classier. They were just embarrassed that their submission in an archeological journal was so similar to what they carved into their desk in school, and I’m damn certain the school desk isn’t protected from evil either.
I also feel this way about all of the historical remnants of how much ancient people loved their pets. There are still ancient roadside shrines throughout Europe to memorialize ancient people’s pets. <3
Maeshowe, in the Orkney Islands off the northern tip of Scotland. It's a properly ancient structure, and there are 30 runic inscriptions in it which are all just straight up graffiti, including "Tholfir Kolbeinsson carved these runes high up". My favourite part is it's not even that high up, like the guy was probably just on someone's shoulders.
Oddly enough we probably have the story of the graffiti artists. The Orkneyinga saga tells the tale of some 12th century Norsemen who took shelter there during a snowstorm and looted the place. By the time they did so, Maeshowe was already about 4,000 years old, and whatever they looted was probably left there by their own ancestors a few centuries beforehand.
Medicine existed in some form as long as humanity has
Probably longer. Most or all primates eat or rub plants with anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties. Some monkeys, bears too I think. So medicine probably predates the emergence of homo.
I think we are a lot better at pretending that people don't kill each other often and for little reason than people from 1,000 years ago.
It's almost as if the reason it was made into one of the ten commandments was that people did it so much that the leaders at the time felt they needed to try to put a stop to it.
Probably the same thing with lying and lusting after your friend's wives and properties. In lieu of a government and system strong enough to protect you, you would have to defend yourself against your stronger or better armed neighbors taking everything they want from you, including your life.
Not only that, but racism, rape, torture and genocide too. All sorts of horrible things have been around for thousands of years, if not longer. History keeps repeating these things, because the exact same stupidity is responsible for writing history.
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