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----- --- 14901748 Do you ever think about what bygone historical periods were "like?" We can pin down so much detail with archaeology and history, we know all these facts, but what were people LIKE. I feel like historians rarely talk about this directly, at most their personal "feel" for it just comes out indirectly in their writing. On the other hand, historical fiction writers have to have a "feel" for what it was "like," because they're not just describing details, they're making the whole setting come to life. But most of the time they do this by making the people "basically like us, but a little different" (if that makes sense). It seems like historians default to that perspective a lot too. They make the reasonable assumption that Old Kingdom Egyptians were just ordinary people too, like us, with similar issues like work and family problems. Like we can see in the Heqanakht papyri, everyday mundane stuff that we can identify with. But I can never get over how different the ancients seem in spite of this. Sure they were similar in a lot of surface ways, they're human. But what if they really did, for example, go around talking and thinking "like" the way they do in the official records and narratives we have? What if people in the Bronze Age had a fundamentally different consciousness, like some kind of Sapir-Whorf type of thing, but even deeper than that? Sometimes I get flashes of almost feeling like I can directly access what a past era was "like" in this subtle way, but I can never hold onto them. --- 14901846 Thats a interesting notion OP. Its unfortunately something we will never experience because it is a 'feeling' you get when you're in a place and space. You can extensively research something but until you physically experience it you will never get that feel. I personally feel any ancient society would have a vastly different feeling to ours. Their lifestyle and points of reference are so far removed from ours it would be unrecognisable apart from human essentials like eating. --- 14902487 >>14901748 (OP) No --- 14903143 >>14901748 (OP) >We can pin down so much detail with archaeology and history, we know all these facts Lmao --- 14903151 >>14901748 (OP) They were like this >strong violent men got pussy and respect in their local communities >weak men like you got bullied or killed and got crumbs of pussy If you want more info about past societies let me know --- 14903336 >>14901748 (OP) Iliad was written because some noblemen or basileis or wathever wanted the figure of the aristocracy and its values to be depicted for posterity (the oral story is older) so you could argue greek best men and heroes were basically sadistic uncontrolled infant-minded giga-chads --- 14904368 >>14903336 That's what Tuchman says about them and about medieval Normans too --- 14904422 >>14901748 (OP) Then there is EaNasir and his bad copper... --- 14904524 >>14901846 >Its unfortunately something we will never experience because it is a 'feeling' you get when you're in a place and space. You can. Just interact with people from different culture. Interacting with Eskimos, nomadic Mongolians, untouched Amazon tribes or Muslims probably wouldn't feel so different to compared to their counterparts in both behavior and mentality |