The History Thread

Leiden Archaeology department looks at video games and archaeology quite a bit. I recently saw a few PhDs they advertised about the archaeology of video games with Assassin's Creed cited as one of the games. They've also been working on Minecraft stuff for a good few years now.

Here’s the Round City on Minecraft:

 
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!
 
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!

That is really impressive. The comparison slider images are brilliant.
 
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!

That's great.
 
That is really impressive. The comparison slider images are brilliant.
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

2LHVS3ET5FNCXLZJN4OAYFCI5A.jpg


https://www.reuters.com/science/arc...th-section-large-ramses-ii-statue-2024-03-04/
 
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!
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.
  1. above
  2. Julius Caesar vs Vercingetorix and the wall within a wall at Alesia.
  3. Battle of Myeongnyang
Would be interested in others’ top 3s. Has to be a contained event; i.e. Could be siege of Tyre but not the entirety of Alex the Great’s conquest.
 
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!

I'm quite disappointed, I thought he'd built it in his back garden.
 
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:

Round-City.png

Round-City-key.png


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.
Pardon my ignorance but why was the round city so important?
 
Pardon my ignorance but why was the round city so important?

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.
 
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.
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)."

1200px-Shaharah_bridge.jpg
 
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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)."

1200px-Shaharah_bridge.jpg

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.
 
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:

IMG-8340.jpg

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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:

IMG-8907.jpg

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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:

 
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:

IMG-8907.jpg

IMG-8908.jpg

IMG-8909.jpg

IMG-8910.jpg

IMG-8911.jpg


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.”
 
Which one? Genuine question.

The bombing of Dresden in February 1945 is widely viewed as a revenge bombing that served no strategic purpose nor any military interest, especially at a time where it was clear that Germany was all but defeated. It's one of the Allies darkest moments in WWII.

That's the IDF way. They just erase a whole block to get one guy who's probably there. There's many reports from Israeli soldiers that will tell you how disproportionate their use of artillery and airstrikes is. They don't go in the tunnels and instead they exact revenge on the civilian population.



- 5% (and counting) of the Gaza population are casualties.
- There's at least 79,000 housing units completely destroyed and 370,000 damaged, which effectively means that half of the population is homeless. Keep in mind that the housing build rate in Gaza was 992 units a year prior to 10/7. Even at a five-fold higher rate, it would take until 2040 to rebuild what was lost.
- Almost 90% of the schools have been either severely damaged or destroyed. 260 teachers have been killed by the IDF.
- Every single university in Gaza (12) has been destroyed. 95 professors and 5,400 students have been killed by the IDF.
- 31 hospitals out of 36 have been either destroyed or damaged. 345 doctors and nurses have been killed by the IDF.
- 195 heritage sites, 227 mosques and 3 churches have either been damaged or destroyed, including the Central Archives of Gaza, which catalogued 150 years of history.
- 190 administrative buildings have been destroyed.
- 16 cemetaries have been either damaged or destroyed by the IDF.
- The damages caused by the IDF amount to $30 to 40 billions and we're talking about a 141 square miles territory.

The amount and scale of damage in Gaza has not been seen since WWII and effectively sent it back to the stone age, for those willing to stay. If this is not a deliberate intent to destroy the Palestinians as a people, then I don't know what to tell you (obviously not directed at you). And I'm not even taking into account what's happening in the West Bank.

In short, to any present and future poster coming with a "But, but Israel is just defending itself and tries to minimize civilian casualties": Shame on you.
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.

Despite postwar claims that Dresden had no military significance, it was in fact a rail center important to the Third Reich’s faltering war effort in the East. There were also factories engaged in arms production here.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/apocalypse-dresden-february-1945#:~:text=Despite postwar claims that Dresden,engaged in arms production there.
 
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.
 
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.

I wrote a summary that i'll copy over here, but yes, you are in essence correct.

Re: Dresden

Historians and commentators who consider Dresden revenge bombing ought to take a trip to the Soviet Archives and US/UK archives to read the documents and sources pertaining to the decision making before and during the bombing of Dresden.

A few points to consider anyhow:

1) By 1945 the Germans knew they were losing, (despite internal propaganda to the contrary) and their strategy revolved around the concept of 'Verteidigungsbereich', a series of military chokepoints on strategic locations along the Eastern front that were to be held at all costs. All expenses were not to be spared in making sure that the Germans held on to these positions because if they fell then that entire section of the front would fall. Heinz Guderian was responsible for designation of these defensive chokepoints along the Southern sector of the Eastern Front, and he personally chose Dresden. Dresden was vital strategically because it was a) relatively untouched by Western bombing as it was in the far south eastern corner of Germany and therefore had the vast majority of its infrastructure, both civilian and military, in tact. b) It sat on the border between the east and western banks of the Elbe. The closest crossing of the Elbe was +-150 miles from Dresden. If Dresden could be held, the Elbe provided a natural barrier against Soviet forces in the Southern sector of the Eastern Front.

2) As a follow up to the first point, The soviets by early 1945 were launching the Vistula-Oder offensive, which was some of the most brutal segments of the Eastern front. If you look at maps of the offensive, after a month of fighting, there were huge gains in the North/Center, but the Soviets were suffering huge casualties in the South. Why? Because German logistics infrastructure was practically intact. The railway intersection in Dresden could transport two entire German divisions a day to the front and back, allowing for much easier troop rotation, delivery of munitions and supplies as well as reinforcements to plug any gaps in the line. On a side note, it was averaged that 2150 Jews were being ferried to Auschwitz via Dresden per day, but that information only became available post war. Between January 15th and February the 9th, the Soviets request three separate occasions for the Western Allies to bomb Dresden. These requests were initially denied, because running Strategic bombing missions to that corner of Germany was deemed too much of a risk, as it would severely stretch the range of even the most capable escort-fighters at the time (P-51 Mustangs). However, as it looked like the Soviets were loosing momentum on the Southern Front by mid-February, the western allies decided it was the best thing to do. There was a genuine fear that the Soviet offensive had stalled in that region, so the decision was made to flatten it.

3) Two separate recommendations had been made for bombing attacks on Dresden before 1945, one being in December 1944, where Allied intelligence reported that there were 127 Military factories, housing 62,000 German Workers in the war effort. In these factories, production entailed ball bearings, tungsten rods, military telephones, shell munitions and aircraft spare parts. It was estimated around 19% of all German ball bearing production was handled in Dresden by December 1944.

4) As a direct result of the bombing, Military infrastructure around Dresden was flattened and ultimately this led to the great success of the Lower-Silesia Offensive and the Vienna Offensive launched by the Soviets in the following months, due to the inability of OKW to meaningfully get supplies, munitions and men to the front and to rotate cleanly. It also completely removed Dresden as a chokepoint on the Elbe.

You can argue that without the bombing of Dresden, the allies would have still won, which is obviously true. But the same can be said for many bombing campaigns of late 44 and 45. The question you have to ask therefore is, how many lives did the deaths of 25,000 Germans in Dresden, save? The answer is, with a good degree of certainty, multiple orders of magnitude more. Compare the loss ratios on that sector of front in the Vistula-Oder offensive compared to the Lower-Silesia and Vienna offensives to see the difference it made to the casualties on the Soviet side of the Eastern front. It also wasn't a one off bombing raid either, after the city was flattened, the Allies kept coming back to it to make sure that the railways were not being repaired, and the factories were not being rebuilt or re set up. It was a huge strategic objective.

Now comes the question: Why is there so much fuss around Dresden?

and the answer ties in with many of the myths of WWII, which is Nazi propoganda mixed in with post-war revisionism. After Dresden, the Germans released media coverage that up to 490,000 Germans had been butchered at Dresden (the real number was around the 25,000 mark). Then, in the post war memories of many notable nazi's/Wehrmacht commanders, many desperately downplayed the importance of Dresden as a useful strategic location. For example, Eric Von Manstein spent almost a year in 1944 recovering from surgery in Dresden, and wrote in his memoirs that it was a peaceful city with no military significance. Guderian, likewise in his memoirs, said the same thing (Which is hilarious because in documented minutes of OKH high command, Guderian personally recommend Dresden to be a Verteidigungsbereich. During the cold war, Eastern sources were not available, so historians genuinely took and believed the provenance of Wehrmacht memoirs as accurate sources. This is also how the "clean wehrmacht" myth stems from, if you read Franz Halder/Rundstedt/Manstein's memoirs, you'd think the Wehrmacht were true professional soldiers with no ties to Nazism, which was far from the case.

Like the Clean Wehrmacht tales, when the Soviet archives were finally opened up alongside the Western equivalents post Cold war, much of the truth of Dresden came into light.
 
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.
 
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.

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.
 
@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
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
High number of civilian casualties and relatively few strategic targets. But war crimes were only done by the Axis Forces.