History: August 2008 Archives

Here's an article that got me thinking

Bulgarian archaeologists discover ancient Thracian chariot

These were the same Thracians spoken of in all those Greek and Roman records and mythical stories. Thracians appear in Classical literature starting with The Illiad. What happened to them?

The Thracians were an ancient people that inhabited the lands of present day Bulgaria and parts of modern Greece, Turkey, Macedonia and Romania between 4,000 B.C. and the 6th century, when they were assimilated by the invading Slavs.

With very few exceptions (maybe some parts of Australia, maybe deep in the Amazon jungle, and possibly a place or two like the Kalihari in Africa), there just isn't anywhere where the original natives are still around. The so-called "Native Americans" "assimilated" at least one earlier wave of settlers, which is an anesthetic way of saying, "killed the men, enslaved and raped the women, and nobody is quite sure what happened to the children." Ditto just about everywhere else. In fact, most places have had multiple known waves of this, and there are almost certainly ones we don't know about. here's a very partial list of the ones we do know about.

It's a good idea to keep this in mind when considering world politics. It's been washed and dressed up, but (for instance) the Arab government in Khartoum and the Janjaweed are no better at the root than Attila's Huns, and perhaps worse. China's Great Wall was a (futile) attempt to shut out the barbarians who had invaded in waves previously, with the hope (frustrated) of being able to ignore them. Look up the meaning of "Hindu Kush." We're dealing with the same culture today. This wasn't anything the "Evil" Europeans of the Age of Discovery had to teach anyone. Pretty much every native polity they encountered had previously "assimilated" one or more rival empires. In fact, when you compare how the Europeans treated the conquered peoples, what stands out is how much better they were than any previous practice. If you want proof, consider this: 500 years after rounding the Cape of Good Hope and discovering the New World, there are still identifiable parts of the previous cultures in place, and people who are recognizably descended from those people. Most of the languages are still spoken, in many cases as the primary tongue of the area (my wife's great grandfather, in southern Mexico, did not speak Spanish according to his son, and there's still areas of Mexico where that applies). If I'm uninformed, maybe some anthropologist will enlighten me, but I'm not aware of any other instance where this applies to conquered people.

"Ethnic cleansing" is a new name for a very old practice, and the evidence is overwhelming that it's an easy thing to give into. It's only changing very slowly, and it's not for no reason that those with territorial ambitions would very much like to take down the nations behind this change. Take away the United States and our allies with elected governments who have been trying to limit this for the last few generations, and the world goes back to conquest as usual.