Agreed. I was going to point that out as well but a few other comments addressed the dating of the sources so I instead just wanted to address the people who read the title and were ready to jump into the comments to beat a dead horse.
It's really just a matter of basic honesty to admit the consensus dating (1550-) up front. The 11 critical comments you're following from the linked article all fail to do this.
You’re right on the details, my bad for not looking up the dates and books, but the argument would be the same, except to say 1600 years or so prior to the cited work in the article, meaning the article is incorrect in its facts. If I was writing an article I guess I would have checked my facts ;)
I'm quite puzzled by this comment. A quick glance through the article and there seem to be several references to what appear to be serious academic work.
So is the issue with the work of the academics? Or the way Wikipedia has put together the article? I'm not a historian by any definition of the word and in quite curious about this.
I'm not saying that the article is untrue. I'm not a historian. What I'm saying is that all content from this source should be treated with high skepticism.
It could be cited in a manner that more clearly signals "There are limits to what we know about them, but our limited knowledge includes this historic stuff."
You know, if you listen to people on the internet from various cultural backgrounds, they routinely roll their eyes at how mainstream media presents them. I'm making the same sort of observation here: That it aggravates me the way we implicitly signal our assumed superiority to older/other cultures.
That aggravation is not based on a single article. It's based on noticing patterns typically seen in such articles.
It aggravates me in part because I think it harms our scientific understanding. I think you need context to properly understand things and we generally do a poor job of recognizing that we lack that context.
Did you even read the article? It seems well researched, if anything it alludes to the uncertainty inherent in determining with accuracy what happened centuries ago.
How is this relevant to the poster? This just feels like your own pet peeve tacked onto the parent comment. I don't think we really need to start the culture wars on an article looking at anthropological records and a post about historical misconceptions.
Fascinating facts to learn of, but sites like this one and LiveScience tend to interject too much extra content that is unsubstantiated. Adding in the bit about Caesar coming in, when he wasn't on his high horse for 150 years after these people died. Just because some general time period was 2,200 years ago, doesn't mean there isn't a significant gap between the ages. 150 years can change a lot. It's the time between the age of slavery in the US to today.
Then the bisexual (/poly?) suggestion and hedonistic remark. Citations or substantiation? Very unprofessional but I suppose these are online authors from no specific literary tradition. It was a Roman source that recorded a consort to a Celtic king that supposedly told Emperor Augustus's wife, “we consort openly with the best of men. You allow yourselves to be debauched in secret by the vilest.” Which is the hedonist? I'm American, of now-distant European Celtic & Germanic tribal extraction and while a non-expert, am knowledgeable enough in the subject to see when someone is interjecting their personal nonsense into an article.
I mean, the name of the source implied that there was likely to be some material of that kind to find, so it's helpful in its way. The fact that you find the context damning but seem to be unhappy that it was revealed is worrying. I don't actually agree with the author, but it's not -that- bad of a position.
EDIT: it's actually a lot stranger on a second read
I think you've just committed a sort of armchair dilettante history off the top of the dome with lack of reference to a scholarly source of History you accused Jonathan of doing.
meheleventyone has demonstrated how easily even just referencing the article I myself posted could undermine my argument.
You said exactly what I wanted to say but far more eloquent and thorough.
I totally agree. I see so many of these articles judging the past according to modern values. It’s absolute anachronistic nonsense if you ask me. I have no idea why people keep writing articles like this, except perhaps as some kind of signaling.
Yeah, it made it impossible for me to take the OP seriously when they weren’t even around in the timeframe they’re referencing. Nor did they do the research to get it right. Real crusader putting in the work.
So you take issue with a couple of points, and your main argument against this is an appeal to authority: the suggestion that any dissenting opinion to your own clearly hasn’t read the “right” history books. Also you assert the source of this post must be some column which you are also demonstratively dismissive of, yet you don’t say why.
Have you conclusively dismissed all events stated in the article? It doesn’t seem your case is that strong right now.
So why don’t we try to focus on what’s your main dislike? Could you explain your reason for the reflexive desire to disprove? I don’t understand where the suspicion comes from. Why are you and others seemingly eager to dismiss these histories? What would be so troubling to you if it were true? I’m genuinely curious.
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