Really, I don't mind material like that still be present in current day as long as there is some context.
Problem a lot of people have when it comes to racism is that they thing its some rare, monstrous thing. When really its deeply ingrained in society, sometimes right down to our children's cartoons.
I've been reading a book about Prohibition and the shit congressmen said about black people decades after the Civil War is mind boggling.
Some congressman gave an impassioned speech against women's suffrage because it'd "be an inevitable step towards the enfranchisement of n****** everywhere."
And people voted for that guy.
To be honest, there are a number of politicians in the modern day who are absolutely no different. And people still vote for these geese.
Really, I don't mind material like that still be present in current day as long as there is some context.
Problem a lot of people have when it comes to racism is that they thing its some rare, monstrous thing. When really its deeply ingrained in society, sometimes right down to our children's cartoons.
I've been reading a book about Prohibition and the shit congressmen said about black people decades after the Civil War is mind boggling.
Some congressman gave an impassioned speech against women's suffrage because it'd "be an inevitable step towards the enfranchisement of n****** everywhere."
"You and I know the best way to keep the n***** from voting. You do it the night before the election."
“I call on every red-blooded white man to use any means to keep the n*****s away from the polls; if you don’t understand what that means you are just plain dumb."
Bilbo represented the dark side of Populism- highly progressive on economic issues (his base was poor tenant farmers) he was unabashedly racist and anti-science. In addition to calling for "the Negro vote to be abolished" he single-handedly caused Mississippi's universities to lose their accreditation by firing over 179 faculty members and replacing them with handpicked yes-men. The Dean of the University of Mississippi Medical School was replaced by "a man who once had a course in dentistry".
There is a statue of him in the Mississippi Capitol building. It was originally in the Rotunda but has since been moved to another room, which is used for meetings of the Mississippi Black Caucus. They use it as a coat rack.
the awesome is for the coat rack; if you have to have a statue of the asshole, it seems like the tiniest bit of justice. though having it somewhere for birds to poop on it would be its own kind of satisfaction.
I don't know where to talk about this but recently it was discovered that half of viking warriors were women
this was revealed by having people actually look at their bones
you see, previously it was assumed that viking warriors were all men because they were buried with their weapons, and the vikings that were buried with their weapons were known to be men because they were buried with weapons
how can I have any faith in anthropology anymore after learning about that brilliant methodology
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
edited September 2014
I dunno, is the implication that no records from vikings or any culture they encountered talked about how "and also half their warriors were women"? Because if that is actually the case then I don't think that is an incredibly unreasonable assumption given common current and historical attitudes about women as warriors
either way it is cool if true
edit and the best thread would totally have been the "fucking interesting" one
edit edit in which somebody posted an actual link about it like 2 hours ago
If this is true, one has to keep in mind there were also other geographic areas in which female burials were sometimes accompanied by weapons and weapons not only functioned as tools of war, but also as signs of status.
Abbesses in medieval and early modern Germany often possessed swords as a sign of their lordship over certain areas (and judicial power). This one is a really beautiful example.
I never came across any sources, contemporary or otherwise, that mentioned female vikings when I studied, you know
Viking raids on Anglo-Saxon communities
Which could mean the sources are wrong, could mean that this new evidence has been vastly overstated in terms of significance
I'm curious about signs of wear on the bones
in Sauromatian burial sites, there were women buried with weapons, armor, etc. who also showed indications of conflict
such as having an arrowhead lodged in the knee joint, fractures, and the like
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According to the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, shieldmaidens fought on the Danish side at the Battle of Bråvalla, in the year 750.
"Now out of the town of Sle, under the captains Hetha (Heid) and Wisna, with Hakon Cut-cheek came Tummi the Sailmaker. On these captains, who had the bodies of women, nature bestowed the souls of men. Webiorg was also inspired with the same spirit, and was attended by Bo (Bui) Bramason and Brat the Jute, thirsting for war...The same man witnesses that the maiden Weghbiorg (Webiorg) fought against the enemy and felled Soth the champion. While she was threatening to slay more champions, she was pierced through by an arrow from the bowstring of Thorkill, a native of Tellemark."
I never came across any sources, contemporary or otherwise, that mentioned female vikings when I studied, you know
Viking raids on Anglo-Saxon communities
Which could mean the sources are wrong, could mean that this new evidence has been vastly overstated in terms of significance
I'm curious about signs of wear on the bones
in Sauromatian burial sites, there were women buried with weapons, armor, etc. who also showed indications of conflict
such as having an arrowhead lodged in the knee joint, fractures, and the like
Don't make a Skyrim joke. Don't make a Skyrim joke. Don't make a Skyrim joke.
Hopefully this encourages other sites to be looked at again. If they haven't been measuring bones and what not to find out the sex of the dead then they should probably do that.
I never came across any sources, contemporary or otherwise, that mentioned female vikings when I studied, you know
Viking raids on Anglo-Saxon communities
Which could mean the sources are wrong, could mean that this new evidence has been vastly overstated in terms of significance
I'm curious about signs of wear on the bones
in Sauromatian burial sites, there were women buried with weapons, armor, etc. who also showed indications of conflict
such as having an arrowhead lodged in the knee joint, fractures, and the like
Don't make a Skyrim joke. Don't make a Skyrim joke. Don't make a Skyrim joke.
I recently went delving back into the Eddas and I think Skyrim gets it's name from a minor character in there.
I never came across any sources, contemporary or otherwise, that mentioned female vikings when I studied, you know
Viking raids on Anglo-Saxon communities
Which could mean the sources are wrong, could mean that this new evidence has been vastly overstated in terms of significance
I'm curious about signs of wear on the bones
in Sauromatian burial sites, there were women buried with weapons, armor, etc. who also showed indications of conflict
such as having an arrowhead lodged in the knee joint, fractures, and the like
Don't make a Skyrim joke. Don't make a Skyrim joke. Don't make a Skyrim joke.
I recently went delving back into the Eddas and I think Skyrim gets it's name from a minor character in there.
I don't know where to talk about this but recently it was discovered that half of viking warriors were women
this was revealed by having people actually look at their bones
you see, previously it was assumed that viking warriors were all men because they were buried with their weapons, and the vikings that were buried with their weapons were known to be men because they were buried with weapons
how can I have any faith in anthropology anymore after learning about that brilliant methodology
It was recently discovered that around half the burials among a dozen or so at one particular site were women, some of whom were buried with weapons and thus may or may not have been warriors, possibly, unless the weapons were signs of status in other ways, etc etc.
The "gender equality in the shieldwall!" articles are basically engaging in Science Journalism Syndrome. If that was actually the case we'd probably still be hearing the gibbering misogynistic panic actually audibly pouring off of the primary source material from the time. (A lot of writers then and in antiquity kind of, well, freaked the fuck out at the idea of even individual women in positions of military significance, never mind a substantial chunk of an effective army.)
The find is neat enough as is in terms of who was buried there and in what ways, bringing up a variety of questions and implications about what life was like there, how women (or these particular ones) were seen by the culture, etc. It does both them and us a disservice to extrapolate something like that to an entire society without a lot of careful digging, though, and it's sad that pretty much all the stories about this have refused to do that.
there's presumably a difference between "more vikings were women than we might have suspected" and "half of all vikings were women"
like, i do think there's a bit of a tendency to historically revise them into something more progressive than they were
like with the mongols, there's a shift away from the eurocentric version of history that paints them all as bloodthirsty mindless barbarians and sometimes that goes too far in the other direction and forgets about all the people they killed
but also it's easy to assume that the last four thousand years have been monolithically misogynist and it's generally worth being on the look-out for counterexamples
the study doesn't seem to go into much detail on what the weapons looked like
I would assume ceremonial swords and actual for-battle swords look different
Swords, meant for use in fighting in earnest, are made to be changed out often. You could not use the same blade over and over again, there's just too much wear on it. Bone, armor, wood, it all notches a steel blade something fierce. If they were buried with a weapon, it could be ceremonial, but not necessarily mean that they didn't use a real one.
There are many weapon burials for women around the Black Sea area. It's theorised, from the burials, that women guarded the herds but put down the bow and spear in motherhood, sometimes taking it up again when older and the kids were grown. Very few have horse trappings in female graves which might suggest they didn't go riding and raiding but we're almost certainly in the line of defence against enemy raids.
Heavily armed housewives, if you will.
Almost every culture has had female warriors in some capacity, it's just they are mostly written out by contemporary sources and historians.
based on my rudimentary study of anthropology, while a lot of cultures have a history of female warriors in some capacity, they would usually only be called up when their homes were under direct attack. Someone had to stay home to look after the house and livestock and kids, and in most societies that would by default be the woman even if they were otherwise okay with women fighting. Sending both the man and woman out to fight afield would be impractical.
As far as I know, our records of Norse history and law indicate that they were still overall a patriarchal culture even if they had female fighters, so married women would have been second-string warriors even if they existed (and most people wealthy enough to own arms would be married as a matter of course)
That reminds me of done book I was reading on medieval and Renaissance women. The medieval women had more power at home because their husbands were off at war. They ruled in their husband's place. As peace time came, men were home more often, and women lost a lot of autonomy.
MulysaSempronius on
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
That reminds me of done book I was reading on medieval and Renaissance women. The medieval women had more power at home because their husbands were off at war. They ruled in their husband's place. As peace time came, men were home more often, and women lost a lot of autonomy.
That's been the case right up to modern times, with WW2 the most famous recent war that happened.
Really, I don't mind material like that still be present in current day as long as there is some context.
Problem a lot of people have when it comes to racism is that they thing its some rare, monstrous thing. When really its deeply ingrained in society, sometimes right down to our children's cartoons.
I've been reading a book about Prohibition and the shit congressmen said about black people decades after the Civil War is mind boggling.
Some congressman gave an impassioned speech against women's suffrage because it'd "be an inevitable step towards the enfranchisement of n****** everywhere."
And people voted for that guy.
To be honest, there are a number of politicians in the modern day who are absolutely no different. And people still vote for these geese.
I audited a class back in university that was about Central Asian history, and what made it different is it was being told from a Central Asian perspective. The professor was a dude from Uzbekistan and the whole thing made me address a lot of Euro-centric narratives I had been taught about history.
This is not to say that it was unbiased, or even that it was somehow less biased. It was just a completely different set of biases. It was their history, told by their people. And sometimes that's worth it's own kind of perspective.
Like, one of the things that I learned that was really fascinating was how differently the Mongol Empire is viewed in different parts of the world versus the European and American view on it. Like, the popular Western conception of the Mongol Empire is of these raiding barbarian hordes on horseback, who pillaged and ransacked and murdered wantonly and so on. And while there's an extent to which that is true, they did do those things, that sort of begins and ends the Western conception of the Mongols because for the most part, Western Europe never really fell to Mongol conquest so to Westerners that's what the Mongol Empire was.
Whereas, in Central Asia, it's a little different. Like, one of the things I learned was how the Mongol Empire actually really fucking loved taxes. They actually had a pretty complex taxation system and took taxation deathly seriously and would murder the shit out of people for fucking around with their taxes. Taxes formed the backbone of their empire's economy and supporting their war machine (ain't like the Mongols themselves wanted to engage in much, if any, agriculture or trade) so they made a point of like, acknowledging which people in their vassal states were really good at bureaucracy and managing their taxation system and like, moving them around to manage the day-to-day paperwork of the empire.
They also loved trade (because it was a fantastic source of tax revenue) and as a result took banditry really seriously, and that meant if you were a trader travelling in the Mongol Empire life was actually quite safe and secure for you. If some bandit tried to fuck with you, you could hold up a seal of the warlord who your goods are being taxed by (and thus, who this bandit would be fucking over) and the bandit would be like "naw man I don't want none of that shit". It was like robbing a mob bank, nobody did that shit because the retribution would've been swift, brutal, and disproportionate to serve as a warning to others.
They didn't care much about gender roles (steppe folk and other nomadic cultures tend not to, as a rule, when you live like that everyone has to bust their ass and gender roles and the resultant patriarchal establishments tend to become things you can't care about), and they allowed quite a lot of freedom of religion under their empire, because they were animists who revered the gods of their land and considered the faiths of other peoples to be inferior and lacking and go on, pray to your god, ain't like he saved yo bitch ass from being conquered anyway.
Like basically the Mongol attitude towards much of the culture and people they encountered west of them was to look at their gender division, racism, classism, religious strife, and generally just find their entire culture kind of quaint or barbaric. The hilarious irony of it all is the Mongols, like all empires, considered themselves a civilizing force on a world that couldn't get its shit together.
the study doesn't seem to go into much detail on what the weapons looked like
I would assume ceremonial swords and actual for-battle swords look different
Swords, meant for use in fighting in earnest, are made to be changed out often. You could not use the same blade over and over again, there's just too much wear on it. Bone, armor, wood, it all notches a steel blade something fierce. If they were buried with a weapon, it could be ceremonial, but not necessarily mean that they didn't use a real one.
Were they buried with other weapons as well? As I understand, swords are the most used in decorative and ritualistic fashions, but as far as share of practical use, swords played a ubiquitous yet secondary role in most tactical encounters.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I audited a class back in university that was about Central Asian history, and what made it different is it was being told from a Central Asian perspective. The professor was a dude from Uzbekistan and the whole thing made me address a lot of Euro-centric narratives I had been taught about history.
This is not to say that it was unbiased, or even that it was somehow less biased. It was just a completely different set of biases. It was their history, told by their people. And sometimes that's worth it's own kind of perspective.
Like, one of the things that I learned that was really fascinating was how differently the Mongol Empire is viewed in different parts of the world versus the European and American view on it. Like, the popular Western conception of the Mongol Empire is of these raiding barbarian hordes on horseback, who pillaged and ransacked and murdered wantonly and so on. And while there's an extent to which that is true, they did do those things, that sort of begins and ends the Western conception of the Mongols because for the most part, Western Europe never really fell to Mongol conquest so to Westerners that's what the Mongol Empire was.
Whereas, in Central Asia, it's a little different. Like, one of the things I learned was how the Mongol Empire actually really fucking loved taxes. They actually had a pretty complex taxation system and took taxation deathly seriously and would murder the shit out of people for fucking around with their taxes. Taxes formed the backbone of their empire's economy and supporting their war machine (ain't like the Mongols themselves wanted to engage in much, if any, agriculture or trade) so they made a point of like, acknowledging which people in their vassal states were really good at bureaucracy and managing their taxation system and like, moving them around to manage the day-to-day paperwork of the empire.
They also loved trade (because it was a fantastic source of tax revenue) and as a result took banditry really seriously, and that meant if you were a trader travelling in the Mongol Empire life was actually quite safe and secure for you. If some bandit tried to fuck with you, you could hold up a seal of the warlord who your goods are being taxed by (and thus, who this bandit would be fucking over) and the bandit would be like "naw man I don't want none of that shit". It was like robbing a mob bank, nobody did that shit because the retribution would've been swift, brutal, and disproportionate to serve as a warning to others.
They didn't care much about gender roles (steppe folk and other nomadic cultures tend not to, as a rule, when you live like that everyone has to bust their ass and gender roles and the resultant patriarchal establishments tend to become things you can't care about), and they allowed quite a lot of freedom of religion under their empire, because they were animists who revered the gods of their land and considered the faiths of other peoples to be inferior and lacking and go on, pray to your god, ain't like he saved yo bitch ass from being conquered anyway.
Like basically the Mongol attitude towards much of the culture and people they encountered west of them was to look at their gender division, racism, classism, religious strife, and generally just find their entire culture kind of quaint or barbaric. The hilarious irony of it all is the Mongols, like all empires, considered themselves a civilizing force on a world that couldn't get its shit together.
One nation's heroes are always another's villains.
the Mongols are pretty fascinating as both administrators and conquerors
dudes ruled a lot of shit and killed a lot of people
like, the same Empire was invading Poland and Vietnam almost simultaneously while England was still getting a handle on the logistics of fighting in the Levant
the study doesn't seem to go into much detail on what the weapons looked like
I would assume ceremonial swords and actual for-battle swords look different
Swords, meant for use in fighting in earnest, are made to be changed out often. You could not use the same blade over and over again, there's just too much wear on it. Bone, armor, wood, it all notches a steel blade something fierce. If they were buried with a weapon, it could be ceremonial, but not necessarily mean that they didn't use a real one.
Were they buried with other weapons as well? As I understand, swords are the most used in decorative and ritualistic fashions, but as far as share of practical use, swords played a ubiquitous yet secondary role in most tactical encounters.
I don't have an answer to that, but hardly anything survives of spears with iron heads, usually.
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To be honest, there are a number of politicians in the modern day who are absolutely no different. And people still vote for these geese.
That was the one I was referencing.
Dante Basco played Rufio in Hook and Zuko in The Last Airbender (and General Iroh II in Legend of Korra).
Decades? Try almost a hundred years later.
Bilbo represented the dark side of Populism- highly progressive on economic issues (his base was poor tenant farmers) he was unabashedly racist and anti-science. In addition to calling for "the Negro vote to be abolished" he single-handedly caused Mississippi's universities to lose their accreditation by firing over 179 faculty members and replacing them with handpicked yes-men. The Dean of the University of Mississippi Medical School was replaced by "a man who once had a course in dentistry".
There is a statue of him in the Mississippi Capitol building. It was originally in the Rotunda but has since been moved to another room, which is used for meetings of the Mississippi Black Caucus. They use it as a coat rack.
Unless maybe he was also an asshole to birds.
this was revealed by having people actually look at their bones
you see, previously it was assumed that viking warriors were all men because they were buried with their weapons, and the vikings that were buried with their weapons were known to be men because they were buried with weapons
how can I have any faith in anthropology anymore after learning about that brilliant methodology
either way it is cool if true
edit and the best thread would totally have been the "fucking interesting" one
edit edit in which somebody posted an actual link about it like 2 hours ago
Abbesses in medieval and early modern Germany often possessed swords as a sign of their lordship over certain areas (and judicial power). This one is a really beautiful example.
Viking raids on Anglo-Saxon communities
Which could mean the sources are wrong, could mean that this new evidence has been vastly overstated in terms of significance
I'm curious about signs of wear on the bones
in Sauromatian burial sites, there were women buried with weapons, armor, etc. who also showed indications of conflict
such as having an arrowhead lodged in the knee joint, fractures, and the like
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
did those records explicitly mention male warriors either
given this methodology I wouldn't be surprised if sources that just mentioned "viking warriors" without gender were just assumed to refer to all men
Anthropologists generally don't study text sources
And Modern English is lucky to have non-gendered occupational titles
Some of them did, yes
Descriptions of the men who fought, etc
You also have to remember that occupational named are gender loaded terms in many of the languages that would have been used at the time.
?
Don't make a Skyrim joke. Don't make a Skyrim joke. Don't make a Skyrim joke.
Maybe a bunch of women joined a raid in a once in several lifetimes event.
I recently went delving back into the Eddas and I think Skyrim gets it's name from a minor character in there.
Skyrimir
It means "looks big"
"But is actually only fifteen square miles"
It was recently discovered that around half the burials among a dozen or so at one particular site were women, some of whom were buried with weapons and thus may or may not have been warriors, possibly, unless the weapons were signs of status in other ways, etc etc.
The "gender equality in the shieldwall!" articles are basically engaging in Science Journalism Syndrome. If that was actually the case we'd probably still be hearing the gibbering misogynistic panic actually audibly pouring off of the primary source material from the time. (A lot of writers then and in antiquity kind of, well, freaked the fuck out at the idea of even individual women in positions of military significance, never mind a substantial chunk of an effective army.)
The find is neat enough as is in terms of who was buried there and in what ways, bringing up a variety of questions and implications about what life was like there, how women (or these particular ones) were seen by the culture, etc. It does both them and us a disservice to extrapolate something like that to an entire society without a lot of careful digging, though, and it's sad that pretty much all the stories about this have refused to do that.
I would assume ceremonial swords and actual for-battle swords look different
Ah, I haven't seen any Airbender stuff, I had no idea who Zuko is and know that there was no main character called Zuko in Hook.
When dealing with other cultures it's generally best not to make assumptions at all.
I think that was more an assumption about "signs of use" than cultures
A ceremonial chalice ain't as beat up as your daily dinnerware
like, i do think there's a bit of a tendency to historically revise them into something more progressive than they were
like with the mongols, there's a shift away from the eurocentric version of history that paints them all as bloodthirsty mindless barbarians and sometimes that goes too far in the other direction and forgets about all the people they killed
but also it's easy to assume that the last four thousand years have been monolithically misogynist and it's generally worth being on the look-out for counterexamples
Pfft, maybe if your ceremonies are boring and infrequent
Swords, meant for use in fighting in earnest, are made to be changed out often. You could not use the same blade over and over again, there's just too much wear on it. Bone, armor, wood, it all notches a steel blade something fierce. If they were buried with a weapon, it could be ceremonial, but not necessarily mean that they didn't use a real one.
Heavily armed housewives, if you will.
Almost every culture has had female warriors in some capacity, it's just they are mostly written out by contemporary sources and historians.
As far as I know, our records of Norse history and law indicate that they were still overall a patriarchal culture even if they had female fighters, so married women would have been second-string warriors even if they existed (and most people wealthy enough to own arms would be married as a matter of course)
That's been the case right up to modern times, with WW2 the most famous recent war that happened.
Pretty good blog post on the subject:
http://weeklysift.com/2012/12/03/a-short-history-of-white-racism-in-the-two-party-system/
He has one talking about the Confederate roots of the current Tea Party that I also think is a really worthwhile perspective.
GoFund The Portland Trans Pride March, or Show It To People, or Else!
This is not to say that it was unbiased, or even that it was somehow less biased. It was just a completely different set of biases. It was their history, told by their people. And sometimes that's worth it's own kind of perspective.
Like, one of the things that I learned that was really fascinating was how differently the Mongol Empire is viewed in different parts of the world versus the European and American view on it. Like, the popular Western conception of the Mongol Empire is of these raiding barbarian hordes on horseback, who pillaged and ransacked and murdered wantonly and so on. And while there's an extent to which that is true, they did do those things, that sort of begins and ends the Western conception of the Mongols because for the most part, Western Europe never really fell to Mongol conquest so to Westerners that's what the Mongol Empire was.
Whereas, in Central Asia, it's a little different. Like, one of the things I learned was how the Mongol Empire actually really fucking loved taxes. They actually had a pretty complex taxation system and took taxation deathly seriously and would murder the shit out of people for fucking around with their taxes. Taxes formed the backbone of their empire's economy and supporting their war machine (ain't like the Mongols themselves wanted to engage in much, if any, agriculture or trade) so they made a point of like, acknowledging which people in their vassal states were really good at bureaucracy and managing their taxation system and like, moving them around to manage the day-to-day paperwork of the empire.
They also loved trade (because it was a fantastic source of tax revenue) and as a result took banditry really seriously, and that meant if you were a trader travelling in the Mongol Empire life was actually quite safe and secure for you. If some bandit tried to fuck with you, you could hold up a seal of the warlord who your goods are being taxed by (and thus, who this bandit would be fucking over) and the bandit would be like "naw man I don't want none of that shit". It was like robbing a mob bank, nobody did that shit because the retribution would've been swift, brutal, and disproportionate to serve as a warning to others.
They didn't care much about gender roles (steppe folk and other nomadic cultures tend not to, as a rule, when you live like that everyone has to bust their ass and gender roles and the resultant patriarchal establishments tend to become things you can't care about), and they allowed quite a lot of freedom of religion under their empire, because they were animists who revered the gods of their land and considered the faiths of other peoples to be inferior and lacking and go on, pray to your god, ain't like he saved yo bitch ass from being conquered anyway.
Like basically the Mongol attitude towards much of the culture and people they encountered west of them was to look at their gender division, racism, classism, religious strife, and generally just find their entire culture kind of quaint or barbaric. The hilarious irony of it all is the Mongols, like all empires, considered themselves a civilizing force on a world that couldn't get its shit together.
Were they buried with other weapons as well? As I understand, swords are the most used in decorative and ritualistic fashions, but as far as share of practical use, swords played a ubiquitous yet secondary role in most tactical encounters.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
One nation's heroes are always another's villains.
dudes ruled a lot of shit and killed a lot of people
like, the same Empire was invading Poland and Vietnam almost simultaneously while England was still getting a handle on the logistics of fighting in the Levant
I don't have an answer to that, but hardly anything survives of spears with iron heads, usually.