The History Thread
- Thread starter SteveJ
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Very cool. Maybe you will find this interesting too.
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2019/11/rebuilding-palmyra-in-minecraft
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/e...irtual-building-blocks-bring-the-past-to-life
Absolutely, that’s really great. Food for thought.
Some Dutch dude built a full 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan and surroundings:
https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/
This is the former Aztec capital, which was located at the site of what's now Mexico City. We of course don't know the full lay-out of the old city, so there is a fair bit of assumption going on, and part of the neighbourhoods has been generated automatically (which is very sensible for a city this size); but apparently this is pretty accurate insofar as we currently know. Really impressive and quite cool!
https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/
This is the former Aztec capital, which was located at the site of what's now Mexico City. We of course don't know the full lay-out of the old city, so there is a fair bit of assumption going on, and part of the neighbourhoods has been generated automatically (which is very sensible for a city this size); but apparently this is pretty accurate insofar as we currently know. Really impressive and quite cool!
That is really impressive. The comparison slider images are brilliant.
That's great.
Yeah, it's really cool! It also shows me how far these reproductions have come since I last saw one.... uhm... decades ago...?
I guess that mostly shows how out of touch I am with the world, but anyway!
Archaeologists in Egypt unearth section of large Ramses II statue
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https://www.reuters.com/science/arc...th-section-large-ramses-ii-statue-2024-03-04/
https://www.reuters.com/science/arc...th-section-large-ramses-ii-statue-2024-03-04/
Top 3 on my list, maybe number 1, of where I’m going (restricted to human history) when I finally invent my time machine is Cortez waltzing into Tenochtitlan.
- above
- Julius Caesar vs Vercingetorix and the wall within a wall at Alesia.
- Battle of Myeongnyang
See also the brief article in Nature and the scientific paper.
It's kinda wild if true, but I suppose it just isn't...
Been retracted. Who would have thunk it.
I'm quite disappointed, I thought he'd built it in his back garden.
Pardon my ignorance but why was the round city so important?A proposed map of the fabled Round City of Baghdad drawn up by the British orientalist Guy Le Strange in his 1900 publication Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate:
As no trace of the Round City survives today, and no archaeological excavations have as of yet been conducted at the probable site in modern-day Baghdad, Le Strange drafted this map on the basis of several Arabic literary sources, all of which date to the period after the Round City declined and deteriorated. I was surprised to learn that it only remained the centre of Abbasid Baghdad for a period of roughly 50 years (AD 763-813), after which it was largely abandoned by the dynasty following the infamous civil war of the two brothers, Al-Amin and Al-Mamun, with court life in Baghdad shifting across to the east bank of the Tigris.
In terms of the Round City's location in modern-day Baghdad, Le Strange states that the shrine of Maruf al-Karkhi "lay outside the Basrah Gate of the Round City" (#5 on the map above in the southeast corner of the Round City), and suggests that, given his estimated distances of 2,500 yards from gate to gate around the external wall (so a circumference of 10,000 yards), and 3,200 yards diameter for the Round City as a whole, we can get a very good idea of its fixed location.
That bridge is insane considering the time period in which it was built. I'd love to know how they built it with the resources they had available back then.
It was the original city of Baghdad and capital of the Abbasid Caliphate during most of that empire’s peak (late 8th/early 9th centuries), being the centre of probably the world’s greatest civilization at that moment in history. Its completion in the 760s is considered to have kicked off the so-called “Golden Age” of Islamic history. It was also considered a rather unique architectural achievement relative to the times, and has a legendary status in Arab-Islamic folklore due to its association with fabled figures such as Harun al-Rashid.
When's the last time you saw a round city?
That would be the "Shaharah Bridge", built around the 17th century with limestock stones and literally joining two mountains. It was made with traditional building tools just after Yemen regained its independence after roughly a century of domination by the Ottoman Empire. The bridge was to be destroyed in case of an invasion.
"No one really knows exactly how the bridge was built especially at that time, but a few legends try to offer some explanations. One story goes that several bridges were built below the major bridge to help with the transfer of supplies up the rugged terrain. Remnants of the minor bridges are still present today. Another legend explains that al-Yaman is credited with building only ten meters [32.5 feet] of the bridge and the remaining ten meters [32.5 feet] were believed to have been completed by an unknown person from the adjacent mountain.” (Khalife, 2015)."
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I am sure that they are around
That would be the "Shaharah Bridge", built around the 17th century with limestock stones and literally joining two mountains. It was built with traditional building tools after Yemen which just regained their independence after roughly a century of domination by the Ottoman Empire. The bridge was to be destroyed in case of an invasion.
"No one really knows exactly how the bridge was built especially at that time, but a few legends try to offer some explanations. One story goes that several bridges were built below the major bridge to help with the transfer of supplies up the rugged terrain. Remnants of the minor bridges are still present today. Another legend explains that al-Yaman is credited with building only ten meters [32.5 feet] of the bridge and the remaining ten meters [32.5 feet] were believed to have been completed by an unknown person from the adjacent mountain.” (Khalife, 2015)."
Interesting. Even the multiple bridge theory is pretty incredible, as the bridges below would still need to be substantial to carry the weight of the materials and laborers. I'd love to know how they did it.
You and me both.
A Bolshevik pamphlet distributed in Baghdad and throughout Iraq in 1919/20. It was authored by an Indian Muslim dissident who had spent the war years in Afghanistan agitating against the British, before eventually making his way to Moscow after the revolution. According to the scholar Hanna Batatu, it represents “one of the earliest attempts to create sympathy among the Moslem peoples for the Bolshevik Revolution.” It’s taken from the appendices of his massive book The Old Social Classes and Revolutionary Movements of Iraq:
On this day in history…well, still this day in my hemisphere at least, one of the oddest moments of WWII occurred. Members from the German army, German SS, US forces, and French VIP POWs including a tennis star teamed up to fight against…Nazi Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Castle_Itter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Castle_Itter
Here is an account of the arrival of Napoleon’s forces in Egypt in 1798 by the Egyptian historian al-Jabarti, who witnessed the French occupation of Egypt. It’s one of those major episodes in history widely deemed to open a new era:
Napoleon’s declaration goes on and on, and is one of those fairly common cases in Western imperial history where the conqueror very publicly and explicitly attempts to identify with the religion of the subjugated. My favorite recent example is this:
Napoleon’s declaration goes on and on, and is one of those fairly common cases in Western imperial history where the conqueror very publicly and explicitly attempts to identify with the religion of the subjugated. My favorite recent example is this:
That's super interesting, thanks.
Here is an account of the arrival of Napoleon’s forces in Egypt in 1798 by the Egyptian historian al-Jabarti, who witnessed the French occupation of Egypt. It’s one of those major episodes in history widely deemed to open a new era:
Napoleon’s declaration goes on and on, and is one of those fairly common cases in Western imperial history where the conqueror very publicly and explicitly attempts to identify with the religion of the subjugated. My favorite recent example is this:
I'm fascinated by accounts like this. What always struck me as amazing is people's awareness of the world, the individual countries, and world events during those days. In other words, it was more connected than you'd assume. I have this irrational idea that pre-internet and pre-TV people were oblivious of other parts of the world but that doesn't really seem to be the case.
Can anyone recommend a serious but accessible book on the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America?
I found this episode of the great Ottoman History Podcast really fascinating, it’s a really original approach to doing social history:
Ottoman Istanbul After Dark
“What did the nighttime mean in the early modern Ottoman Empire? In this episode, Avner Wishnitzer discusses his recent book As Night Falls: Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities After Dark (also available in Turkish translation by Can Gümüş as Gece Çökerken). He explains how the night was a time for sleep, rest, devotion, sex, crime, drinking, and even revolt. He also talks about the challenges of past sensory states, the influence of the late Walter Andrews on his work, and, finally, the relationship between his work as a historian and his work as an activist.”
Ottoman Istanbul After Dark
“What did the nighttime mean in the early modern Ottoman Empire? In this episode, Avner Wishnitzer discusses his recent book As Night Falls: Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities After Dark (also available in Turkish translation by Can Gümüş as Gece Çökerken). He explains how the night was a time for sleep, rest, devotion, sex, crime, drinking, and even revolt. He also talks about the challenges of past sensory states, the influence of the late Walter Andrews on his work, and, finally, the relationship between his work as a historian and his work as an activist.”
From my reading, but I'm curious for @AfonsoAlves response, Dresden was in fact a logistical center that also included factories. Destroying that was also supposed to ease pressure on the Soviets coming in from the east. Nevertheless, it's not a unanimous conclusion that it was a 'justified' bombing, the ethical questions remain to this day. It's just that the specific claim of Dresden having no significant military infrastructure seems to be contested, though it wasn't in the historical city centre.
Also, a lot of wrong narratives about the bombing persisted for a long time such as hundreds of thousands of deaths which was then revised to a smaller figure of 25k.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/apocalypse-dresden-february-1945#:~:text=Despite postwar claims that Dresden,engaged in arms production there.
Feck me.
I just saw @AfonsoAlves reply and I have first to personally dig in every credible historic source to come up with any decent counter-argument.
Good that this question was moved from the Israel-Palestine thread. The accusation of derailing the thread would've been more than justified.
@That_Bloke
This is a fantastic read on the myths and truths regarding Dresden.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dresden-Tuesday-13-February-1945/dp/0747570841
This is a fantastic read on the myths and truths regarding Dresden.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dresden-Tuesday-13-February-1945/dp/0747570841
During my reading of history several things seemed quite eye opening.
First of all, how nuanced the decision-making was at the time when some event happened, for which historians really gotta dig deep into archives.
The second, that sometimes popular narratives persist for a long time and newspaper journalists either aren't bothered or don't have the time to tell a story as complete as possible, resulting in articles that leave out important details.
The third, how there are historians themselves who are blatantly biased, dishonest or don't bother to really vet their sources. David Irving for example at different times claimed 135k and 250k deaths in Dresden, seemingly based on one source which was a local Dresden official.
First of all, how nuanced the decision-making was at the time when some event happened, for which historians really gotta dig deep into archives.
The second, that sometimes popular narratives persist for a long time and newspaper journalists either aren't bothered or don't have the time to tell a story as complete as possible, resulting in articles that leave out important details.
The third, how there are historians themselves who are blatantly biased, dishonest or don't bother to really vet their sources. David Irving for example at different times claimed 135k and 250k deaths in Dresden, seemingly based on one source which was a local Dresden official.
This is really key.
Nobody would know that Guderian ordered Dresden to be armed to the teeth if it wasn't for the fact that some poor hapless historian went through old OKH documents of meetings minutes that a secretary typed out on a dusty typewriter and then shoved into a dark cellar somewhere and noticed that Guderian gave the order.
Thanks a lot of the link.
Your reply to my question was a fantastic post. The myth of a clean Wehrmacht has been throughly debunked and nobody with a lick of knowledge would argue the opposite, but I didn't know how far off I was about Dresden.
Honestly, I don't think I can come up with any meaningful reply for the time being as my knowledge simply isn't deep enough right now, and I won't argue just for the hell of it. Time to dig in some history books.
Thanks again.
There are genuine greivances to be had around the handling of Dresden, which Taylor really dives deep into. The strategy of Strategic bombing had shifted in the end of the war, and Dresden was a case of this. Rather than trying to do daytime precision bombing over strategically valuable targets, RAF doctrine shifted towards nighttime carpet bombing raids. Rather than mark the specific targets, the RAF marked out the city center's football ground, and other places in the city center with a general moniker of "If we hit here, we hit everything else of importance." There is a genuine argument to be made that one of the many reasons for this shift in bombing doctrine was due to the resentment and bitterness RAF bomber command had over the sheer destruction the Luftwaffe inflicted on civilian populations in the UK. However, Dresden's situation was not unique nor was it the first instance of city wide carpet bombing to eradicate strategic objectives.
Dresden is remembered because it was the most successful use case of strategic bombing, mainly exasperated by the local administrative incompetence, which again you can read about it Taylor's account. Allied bombing of the Ruhr valley, especially Cologne, was much more prolonged, brutal and destructive. Cologne was subject to 11x the amount of munitions that was dropped on Dresden.
The argument can be made that "Dresden was a legitimate target, but it's methodology of execution was unnecessarily brutal," but the argument of, "Dresden should not have been bombed as a military target" is not a valid one.
He went on to really outdo that screw up later on, too.
Stephen Kotkin by the way is great to listen to when it comes to Stalin. He has written I think 2 volumes on Stalin and working on a 3rd as part of a three-volume biography on Stalin. He noted how archive documents show that behind closed doors, the Soviet leadership said the same things as they said publicly, suggesting that they were in fact actual communists and not just acting like it for political purposes. They believed in communism.
High number of civilian casualties and relatively few strategic targets. But war crimes were only done by the Axis Forces.