History Myths and Misconceptions of History you Hate

CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
...being Stone Age almost certainly precludes Nuclear Reactors... you'd need some damn weird stones to figure out how to do that with them.
I have a new pet peeve, people who think the age of empires tech tree is how it works in real life.

“Technology Levels” aren’t necessarily a thing, just because we say enter the Iron Age, doesn’t necessarily mean we fulky figure out how to make Damascus Steel or something similar
 

ShadowsOfParadox

Well-known member
“Technology Levels” aren’t necessarily a thing, just because we say enter the Iron Age, doesn’t necessarily mean we fulky figure out how to make Damascus Steel or something similar
...I literally just stated a fact, it'd be really damn hard to figure out nuclear reactors when your tools are rocks and you'd need some damn strange rocks to fuel/contain/govern that reaction.
 

Hlaalu Agent

Nerevar going to let you down
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“Technology Levels” aren’t necessarily a thing, just because we say enter the Iron Age, doesn’t necessarily mean we fulky figure out how to make Damascus Steel or something similar

Speaking of steel. That it in and of itself is a modern invention. When in fact that was the mass production of steel, people have been making steel since the beginning of ironworking.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
...being Stone Age almost certainly precludes Nuclear Reactors... you'd need some damn weird stones to figure out how to do that with them.

You have it backwards though. Being in the Stone Age doesn't make you incapable of making nukes. Rather, being incapable of nukes is what causes you to be labeled "Stone Age."

I have a new pet peeve, people who think the age of empires tech tree is how it works in real life.
Actually, the "tech tree" model is true in a simplified sense. More advance technologies and sciences depend on previous scientific and engineering knowledge to be available to the people doing the inventing and studying. This is what "progress" in the materialistic sense is. Where the tech tree model goes wrong is that there isn't really a particular order that you need to go in. Rather, it doesn't matter how you obtained the technical and scientific knowledge and materials, you just have to have them.
 

LordSunhawk

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*Anthropologist hat on* I love these snazzy hats!

The Stone Age is actually divided into three periods, based on the types of tools and the relative complexity of society. The reason it's called the Stone Age is because of the preponderance of stone tools among surviving artifacts, as they also used bone, antler, wood and there is evidence of rope and fabric.

The Paleolithic is from the dawn of tool use (predating Homo Sapiens, I might add, Homo Habilis and Erectus were the source for the earliest and most primitive stone tool traditions). Here we see very primitive and basic tools, albeit of a rather broad variety at first although later it seems to narrow down to the Swiss Army Knife of the Paleolithic, the Handaxe (seriously, with a handaxe you can chop, cut, drill, bash, saw... very clever tools that were in use for over a million years)

Then you have the rather nebulous and transitory Mesolithic, which is when you start to see the earliest examples of agriculture starting, along with more elaborate construction and tools. It's very difficult to identify Mesolithic artifacts because the stone tech is nearly identical to Paleolithic, the difference is primitive agriculture. You usually need surrounding context at the site to make the identification.

Then comes the true Agricultural Revolution and the Neolithic. Tools become much more sophisticated, with a larger proportion of obsidian blades and such, tool making techniques become exceptionally refined (with some surviving artifacts being damn near works of art). You also see the first evidence for mass domestication, the first dogs, larger permanent settlements, and rapidly increasing complexity. The variety of tools explodes, and you also start finding large amounts of pottery shards (seriously, potsherds are the single most common discovery in an archaeological site by a rather massive margin, and the distinctive characteristics of them are used to identify many of the neolithic cultures)

Neolithic cultures could be extremely sophisticated in terms of their projects and such. There are Neolithic cities in India that housed upwards of 100,000 people for example. You have massive agricultural works (terracing, irrigation, etc), you have monumental architecture, you have evidence of trade networks that spanned continents from this period. (Finding a Corded Ware potsherd in the Mideast, for example).
 

CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
Pretty interesting, say read any Robert E. Howard stories?

Guy at some point uses “Stone Age Empires” as a literal term and how even advancing to the Bronze Age makes a society “decadent”
 

LordSunhawk

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So I was right that "Stone Age" is a descriptive term referring to what most of the tools were made out of at that time, rather than some kind of normative force of history that prevents you from making tools out of anything other than stone.

Correct, and the transition from Neolithic to the various later 'technologies' is very fuzzy at times. You'll still have late Neolithic stone tools being made and used alongside early metal tools, for example. And metal technology advanced in very odd ways (strangely enough, the Egyptians actually had *iron* for weapons before they had bronze, albeit it was very rare meteoric iron from meteorites found in the Western Desert and forged into blades)
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
Correct, and the transition from Neolithic to the various later 'technologies' is very fuzzy at times. You'll still have late Neolithic stone tools being made and used alongside early metal tools, for example. And metal technology advanced in very odd ways (strangely enough, the Egyptians actually had *iron* for weapons before they had bronze, albeit it was very rare meteoric iron from meteorites found in the Western Desert and forged into blades)
Yeah, if you've studied history long enough, you know that these "eras" that we divide history into are about as fuzzy as all-get out. This is why I'm very much against the idea that the march of time leads to "progress." There is a pattern to history, but it's a lot more complicated than the bog-standard Whig view of history would make it out to be.
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
So I was right that "Stone Age" is a descriptive term referring to what most of the tools were made out of at that time, rather than some kind of normative force of history that prevents you from making tools out of anything other than stone.
Copper working is considered late neolithic by many scholars. So if a civilization has some copper or gold artifacts, especially if they are cold worked rather than cast, you can call them neolithic.
 

LordSunhawk

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Copper working is considered late neolithic by many scholars. So if a civilization has some copper or gold artifacts, especially if they are cold worked rather than cast, you can call them neolithic.

There's considerable overlap. Copper/gold artifacts are part of the extremely fuzzy dividing line and sometimes you have to consider surrounding cultures (in cases where Group A is working with bronze but has a trade relationship with Group B who is still working primarily with stone, when then trade with Group C which isn't yet sedentary and still firmly at the Paleo/Meso boundary. So then you can find, say, a copper ornament in an otherwise firmly Paleolithic context merely because of the trade networks that existed.

And then there are the weird anomalies... like the cairns discovered in North America that mimic the ceremonial cairns found in Paleolithic western Europe... but which by context are actually completely different.

And don't get me started on the really bizarre stuff. Like a Clovis Point discovered in a strata a good fifty thousand years before the generally accepted first appearance of the Clovis people.
 

Scottty

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In effect, the United States put a knife to the Soviet Union's throat, cried bloody murder when the Soviet Union did the same thing back, and then "negotiated" putting down both sets of throat knives while hiding a much deadlier new knife behind its back.

To quote Sir Humphrey: "We call it Diplomacy, minister."

...I literally just stated a fact, it'd be really damn hard to figure out nuclear reactors when your tools are rocks and you'd need some damn strange rocks to fuel/contain/govern that reaction.

More to the point, what would you do with it anyway? We use nuclear power to generate electricity. And for that, one needs copper wire - lots and lots of it.

One might imagine some Stone Age empire where the palace of the Great Bozo was heated in winter by hot water circulated through clay and bamboo pipes, the water being heated by a makeshift nuclear pile in the basement...

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Pretty interesting, say read any Robert E. Howard stories?
Guy at some point uses “Stone Age Empires” as a literal term and how even advancing to the Bronze Age makes a society “decadent”

Unless you live in the Argentinian pampas or somewhere like that, stone is a material available pretty much everywhere. Whereas to make bronze, you need supplies of both copper and tin, which generally requires some long-range trade networks.
And if your village is part of a maritime trade network... well, that's globalism, ain't it, mate? That's you losin' your independence and becoming part of some big bad World Order! Grrrr!

... and then someone discovers how to smelt iron, which you don't need that kind of supply-chain for...
 

CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
@Scottty
REH tends to describe “Civilization” itself as being prone to decadence even when they still need/use manual labor, slavery and have risks of drought, famine and plague

Even describes one that’s mostly living in peace and farms fruits to live on as being “decadent”

Guys he doesn’t consider “decadent” are the barbarians who have simpler ways of life that don’t involve somewhat stable means of living like lots of farming that produces lots of surplus

Also the side effect of things like Courtly Intrigue occurring due to “too much peace and non-rationed resources” as well as not everybody being a warrior.....guy describes and sorta looks down on the Cathayans for not being warriors 24/7 out of necessity and praises the Mongols for being warriors who were born in the saddle and fight really often
 

Vargas Fan

Head over heels in love :)
One that does get me is when there's debates about Israel/Palestine, people bringing up "Palestine was a British colony", wrong it was a League of Nations mandated territory administered by Britain, in the same way that Syria was a League territory administered by the French.

Another thing, two words....katana wank.
 
Need to fix an earlier statement

No I do not believe in the term "American Concentration Camps" I am just using the most well known misinformation about them, I do know they are Internment Camps which is VERY different and while it brings up the question of human rights and civil liberties violations it is still MUCH MORE humane to live in
 

Lanmandragon

Well-known member
They mostly had. There were remnants leftover, of course, and successor civilizations, but all of them peaked well before the Europeans arrived. There were a series of massive droughts in the region in this period which devastated agriculture, and these civilizations just did not have the ability to import food or adapt to the changing conditions. In addition there is evidence that they were under significant pressure from the Aztec and other Mexica (not Mexican, Mexica, the cultural name for the group of cultures of which the Aztecs were dominant) civilizations in their waning years that contributed to the collapse.

Spanish contact precluded a cycle of rebuilding that had happened in the past, although I would argue that it *was* a rebuilding, just with new templates added to the matrix. The Pueblo V culture (the modern day Pueblo peoples) are by far the longest lasting of all the cultures in the region, and they lasted that long thanks to European assistance.
Is it true that the ancient Aztecs migrated into Mexico from the Southwest? If so we're these droughts the cause of the immigration?
 

Hlaalu Agent

Nerevar going to let you down
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Is it true that the ancient Aztecs migrated into Mexico from the Southwest? If so we're these droughts the cause of the immigration?

I am pretty that is the accepted theory for the field. And I would not be surprised, such things are a driver of mass movement. If I am not mistaken similar dislocations are the cause for Europe being ruled by Indo-European speakers, rather than people like the Basque.
 

Lanmandragon

Well-known member
I am pretty that is the accepted theory for the field. And I would not be surprised, such things are a driver of mass movement. If I am not mistaken similar dislocations are the cause for Europe being ruled by Indo-European speakers, rather than people like the Basque.
Droughts caused the Mayans to collapse to from what I know.
 

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