History Myths and Misconceptions of History you Hate

Hlaalu Agent

Hlaalu Agent

Nerevar going to let you down
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Lanmandragon said:
Droughts caused the Mayans to collapse to from what I know.
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I thought it was them exceeding their environment's carrying capacity among other things. I remember them being listed as an example of a culture that collapsed by screwing up the environment sustaining them, alongside Easter Island. You do know that one right?
 
L

Lanmandragon

Well-known member
Hlaalu Agent said:
I thought it was them exceeding their environment's carrying capacity among other things. I remember them being listed as an example of a culture that collapsed by screwing up the environment sustaining them, alongside Easter Island. You do know that one right?
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Yeah I know about them a little. Your likley right as my knowledge of non American or Roman history is limited. Most of what I know is through osmosis and occasionally YouTube.
 
LordSunhawk

LordSunhawk

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There are actually competing theories as to the origins of the Aztecs, although there are some similarities in the cultures of the Southwest and Aztec culture there are also massive differences. For example, in the various Southwest cultures human sacrifice was not really a thing, instead they used, of all things, parrots as 'proxies' for humans and would sacrifice them (yes, there are parrots native to the Southwest US). The ball game also existed (we have ball courts throughout the Southwest, including the best preserved ones period in Snaketown) but again, unlike the Aztecs the losing team didn't get sacrificed but rather they paid a forfeit in goods to the winning team (apparently, there are no records so this is based on interpretation of artwork and tribal traditions). Southwestern ball courts at least lack the associated mass graves of further south in Mesoamerica.
 
Navarro

Navarro

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Personally speaking, the myth that the Bolsheviks deposed the Tsar. The Tsar had already been deposed some months earlier relatively peacefully.

What the Bolsheviks did was - facilitated by the German government in a scheme to knock Russia out of WW1 - launch a coup in response to only getting 20% of the vote in an election.

An election - the Russian communists didn't depose an autocratic government, but destroyed a democratic one to set up a totalitarian dictatorship.
 
Hlaalu Agent

Hlaalu Agent

Nerevar going to let you down
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Navarro said:
Personally speaking, the myth that the Bolsheviks deposed the Tsar. The Tsar had already been deposed some months earlier relatively peacefully.

What the Bolsheviks did was - facilitated by the German government in a scheme to knock Russia out of WW1 - launch a coup in response to only getting 20% of the vote in an election.

An election - the Russian communists didn't depose an autocratic government, but destroyed a democratic one to set up a totalitarian dictatorship.
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Indeed. And if I am not mistaken wasn't the government that they overthrew decently socialistic? Guess they wanted the whole pie, eh?
 
Big Steve

Big Steve

For the Republic!
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Scottty said:
Stalin later purged most of the old Bolsheviks, accusing them all of being Western agents.
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Stalin's people also at point believed Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five were British double agents trying to trick them. Why? Because for all their claimed access to British secrets, they gave not one report about the British efforts to destroy the Soviet Union's workers' democracy!

Never mind that there was no such effort, Stalin and his circle were completely convinced that the British, especially under Churchill, would be putting effort into infiltrating and undermining the USSR, even though they were in a war for national survival against Hitler.

If only the NKVD had decided to liquidate the "double agents"... :cautious:
 
Darmani

Darmani

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AndrewJTalon said:
Don't see anyone demanding this be addressed with the same vehemence directed towards the people whose ancestors outlawed slavery for almost two centuries and who fought a bloody civil war over it.
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Why would I, an American, care about the STILL incumbent social wide damage and community issues of racism and slavery in America and similar/nearplaces as to... say the Middle East where we are at best part of the problem and worst suckers making it worst
stephen the barbarian said:
people who talk about slavery in the western hemisphere as if it only existed in the southern us from 1770 to 1864,
and ignore the caribbean sugar trade, the spanish enslavement of natives, etc.
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Fair enough but how much and how deeply does one have to self elect to educate as to naturally learn in the course of studies
Seth Vatamaris said:
Grandad simply avoided being arrested by hiding in the forest until the war was over.
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This a myth or what?
Deleted member 1 said:
You would adore In The Time of the Sixth Sun by Thomas Harlan then. Christian - Aztec and Japanese alliance defeats the Eurasian Mongol Empire and becomes a spacefairing nation.
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oooh linkies?
 
Francis Urquhart

Francis Urquhart

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Big Steve said:
Never mind that there was no such effort, Stalin and his circle were completely convinced that the British, especially under Churchill, would be putting effort into infiltrating and undermining the USSR, even though they were in a war for national survival against Hitler.
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It makes more sense if one remembers the basic Russian precept that their allies will always betray them eventually. It's "when" not "if". So, its not quite as unreasonable as it sounds; infiltrating and undermining would be the first stage of that inevitable betrayal.

One of the places I used to work in had a large table shaped like Russia with a hole where Moscow is. One was invited to stand in that hole and look outwards at the "view from Moscow". Everywhere one looked were enemies. It was a salutary lesson in the worldview the Russians live with. Remember just because YOU are paranoid doesn't mean that THEY are not out to get you.

If only the NKVD had decided to liquidate the "double agents".
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That would have been deliciously karmic.
 
Quickdraw101

Quickdraw101

Beware My Power-Green Lantern's Light
The Battle of Thermopylae is always portrayed in fiction as only 300 Spartan warriors who bravely defended the Hot Gates for days on end, killing thousands of Persians until finally being outflanked by the Persian armies.

While the bravery and valor shown by Leonidas and his Spartans shouldn't be forgotten, they weren't the only ones present at the battle. There were 2000 more Thespians, Thebans, and Helots who refused to retreat with the bulk of the Greek Army and stayed to fight alongside Leonidas. Hell, the battle itself was a massive failure that only stopped the Persians for a short period of time. Leonidas didn't watch his flanks and paid for it with defeat. Alongside that common misconception, Spartan soldiers didn't break rank to fight alone and they sure as hell didn't go into battle without armor. They weren't male strippers for gods sake!
 
Navarro

Navarro

Well-known member
CarlManvers2019 said:
In other words they were all “Right Wingers” who needed to be purged for a truly free socialist society and government to be made
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Read up on the Russian Provisional Government again ... so sad. A genuine flowering of democracy in an autocratic state that was ruthlessly destroyed by totalitarians, who then pretended to be the ones who had overthrown the autocracy in question.
 
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