Not really worried. Even if/when AI Bots start writing history books they still will have to be reviewed. Already today we have humans writing Nazi apologetics and it hasn't changed the scholarly view of Nazism. I do particularly love (odd word choice but I can't think of a better one) the books from the late 40s that have apologies in them that the research was delayed due to the Nazis, imprisonment, being forbidden from working because they were Jewish, fighting a war, etc. it's so casual and yet so impactful.

Our main job as historians is to evaluate evidence, we look at at the sources and don't just repeat what they say but examine it. In my work I go down to the very words they use. I've written ~50 pages on ~50 word passages before. So far what we've seen with AI bots (and spotting them quickly) is some very odd word choice.

So as long as we continue to have historians, and as long as we continue to examine these works -- no matter when, where, by who or what they written, then the field really isn't in danger.

Is there a threat to the general public? Sure. But again, no more than the already available things out there, and the fringe and extremists groups pushing it.

You've ended up in r/History, our purpose is to discuss past events about things that already happened. Which is why there's an article about things from the past discussed here.

We feel that this is an important discussion to be had in regards to history and archaeology.

However, this is not the place to discuss politics, this is not the place to discuss climate change denial, and so forth, and so on. There are a million different places on Reddit to discuss those things, so please keep your comments on topic with regard to the Subreddit's overall purpose.

Someone's going to inevitably mention silphium and it going extinct because of people using it as contraceptive, which is a misunderstood concept, but it does have some basis in reality in that a lot of herbs and such were used in a variety of way to help with contraceptive. Some of these things were taken orally, with the belief that it might help (silphium was mainly used as an herb for food, so if it did have these properties there would be a lot of missing babies throughout the Mediterranean). Others would be made into a paste and put inside the woman to essentially collect the sperm within that paste, or it could be dried and placed inside to have the same effect but a bit less messy -- well at least I'd imagine so.

You also had methods we wouldn't recommend in the modern day, when far safer options exist, but in antiquity are not bad, like the pull-out method. Using this method greatly reduces the risk (though still not completely, and you're stuck with hoping the person does this properly).

Well we have this Saturday Questions thread

and a Wednesday Bookclub/Sources thread where people can talk about the books they've been reading

We're definitely wanting to do more for the community, but we do need things to be a bit on topic and about history. If you can think of a way we could do a Mindless Monday or whatever that still has a bit of a history theme I'd be more than happy to talk it over with the other mods and see if we can trial something.

The short version:

The area of Palestine and the areas around it has been occupied, and called home, by many different groups over thousands of years.

Jewish people lived in the region in antiquity, likely having split from an indigenous population (rather than anything like presented in Exodus). However, many groups (including Rome) eventually conquered this region, and overtime there were several Jewish diasporas where Jewish people migrated out of the region.

The origins of the Palestinian people is also a bit complex, with some identifying directly with the indigenous people as well.

Of course some Jewish people continued to live in the region continuously, but a huge factor was the persecution that Jewish people faced in Europe and other areas that they migrated to. In 1492, the Jewish people were forced to leave the Iberian peninsula (the Alhambra Decree). The Ottoman Empire, having flourished in the time in between, offered a home to these fleeing Jewish peoples and they settled in various parts of the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine.

While we don't want to paint things as perfect relationship between Jewish and Ottoman peoples, there wasn't constant hatred and fighting either. There were some elements of class, which gave benefits but also took away equal opportunities. Such as the rights for more secular courts, but not being allowed the same titles, roles, etc. that Muslims could gain. But there were periods and examples of unity (Michelle Campos' Ottoman Brothers is a great read on this tension).

The Ottoman Empire was badly weakened by a drought which happened to coincide with the First World War, which is some really poor timing. This allowed for groups within the Empire that wanted autonomy to start making moves, which fractured things further (e.g. The Turks). After the War, the Allies took it upon themselves to start policing the region and creating new nations. Based on popular beliefs at the time, and understanding the troubles which led to WWI, they began to separate people into their own groups figuring it would help. One of these areas was Mandatory Palestine.

In M.P the French and the British controlled how things were run, and the British Prime Minister created the Balfour Declaration which supported Zionists which believed that they deserved to reverse the diasporas and return and have their homeland in the region like they had in antiquity. So he promised them that this could be done as part of M.P. Of course, this angered some other groups that the British had screwed over, including the Turks, who felt there was a sense of favourtism and too much Western influence when this was about self-determination and autonomy.

They tried a bunch of different proposals, some taken with actual steps, some just ideas on paper: including only Jewish people zones, and only Arab people zones (population exchanges were an unfortunately popular idea at this time as well). The more and more that the western powers tried to get involve, the more tensions rised. And as one side would grow more extreme, the other would do so in response. By the 1940s things were incredibly heated, and WWII meant there was only so much attention that could be placed here, but also was heightened by the antisemitism which was at the centre stage of Nazism which made Jewish peoples even stronger in their demand for a home of their own under their own control. War would break out in M.P, and the British firmly decided they didn't want to deal with any of this that they helped create, and slowly withdrew.

M.P. ended in 1948 and as soon as it did a group of Arab states declared war and Israel declared in dependence. A full scale war was on. Israel would win this war, and help to cement a fear of their neighbours wanting their destruction, and help cement a fear of Israel trying to take over and conquer the arab people in the region. These tensions have gone in waves and valleys, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Israel

So both continue fighting each other, now in less large scale wars but in smaller fights, and instead of looking for ways to make peace and equal concessions, there's just more finger pointing, and thus continued tensions.

Of course, like I said ,this is the short version and it's almost 5k words. It's a very complicated thing, and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface.

What do you mean?

There's a few factors at play.

One is, like you mention, how long people have lived there. So for a thing like a temple, you usually get it to last a bit longer as most people will venerate it and typically will want to make sure it lasts, especially those who worship or recognise that deity (though people like Herostratus have existed). But as time passes, and that religion is replaced, or new people move in that don't respect or recognise that god they might not care for the temple at all, or might deliberately destroy it, or simply start to use the stones and other such things to build their own things. Or they might decide it's a great place to store gunpowder and the Venetians might decide to fire upon your gunpowder supplies to keep you from firing back at them, you know, hypothetically.

But also you need to look at the geography and geology of Greece. There's a lot of hills and mountains, this has a lot of benefits for living there, but it also means there's a lot of stuff constantly going down from higher points of elevation to the lower parts where you might find more settlements. This can be just basic runoff, to landslides, to complete shifts in the land itself from earthquakes and just general plate tectonics. Look for example at how much the area around Thermopylae has changed https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Thermopylae_shoreline_changes_map.png

You also get even more violent events like volcanoes. Which is why places like Pompeii got covered completely. Of course the people living there knew it was there, and their descendants would hear about it and learn it was there, but overtime that direct knowledge was lost and while we had texts they weren't maps, and still only a small population would have been reading and familiar with these stories. The volcano still would keep up its attack and burry it further and further and further down overtime, as well as just that general passage of time.

And that comes back to the first point, how many people have continued living there. New homes, new buildings, new structures, etc. are built over places eventually too. And while there certainly have been times where it's been decided "well, we need to tear down your home and excavate this area" it's generally not a method that's utilised a lot.

And of course this isn't even describing every way things get lost over time: there's a lot more to it, but hopefully it gives you a sense of it all. And this means that there's a lot of cool stuff out there to be discovered. Some most of it probably never will be found. We still have mentions of entire towns and cities that we just don't know where they are. It could be a simple thing as "well, this source calls this town that we already know about by this weird name that was rarely used, it's not lost" some others are "yeah this place is just missing entirely." and it could be under a bunch of houses right now.

Pretty common, there's a common joke at universities about how almost all historians are bad with maths and numbers (which I think there is something to).

Gets even worse when working on projects that spread between BCE and CE and you have to work with second century BCE and second century CE and having to work out how that works for both.

I mainly avoid using the terms when giving lectures and just stick to specific dates or say "around 200 BCE" etc. Much easier.

Getting paid until 2027 but not having to do any of the work after 2022? "How unfortunate for me" - Kliffleberry

Sava River, known as the Savus in Latin which was "Save" in the vocative.

Good book, his later edition with the added foreword is nice too but not enough to specifically search for if you have one of the earlier publishings already.

There are obviously still fresh wounds and current political implications at play with regards to the events discussed in this article. Our priority here at this subreddit is to focus on the things that happened at least 20 years ago, and not those reverberating effects still occurring now.

With an event so closely tied to more modern politics and a story that clearly has some modern political implications the line between acceptable and rule breaking can be very blurry.

So we just ask that you try your best to ensure that the main focus here is on the past events (i.e. whether France was actually complicit in the 1994 genocide) and less so on the present events (i.e. how politicians might currently be acting regarding it). If you are unsure or have any questions feel free to contact the mods via modmail.

sigh

locks

One day...

Rule 5.

Lol Neckbeards are big mad

The common era is the dating system we use now, we're in the year 2023 of the Common Era (CE). Before the year 1 CE there was the year 1 BCE (Before Common Era), and we count backwards from there.

It's the exact same system used with BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini). It's the year AD 2023, and the year 2023 CE.

Julius Caesar died in 44 BCE, and 44 BC.

Make sense now?

All discussions on the sub must be about events that happened at least 20 years ago (and of course follow the other rules too). But that one is non negotiable.

It matters because everything that happens is part of history, and thus historical. But to keep ourselves from being overwhelmed with modern events -- which the r/news r/politics r/worldnews etc subreddits cover perfectly, we ensure that there is a large gap between the present and the past to maintain something which sets us apart from other subreddits.

Can we please have one thread where people don't just focus on one small inconsequential part of the headline and instead discuss the actual article?

Yes, they thought them to be real events, and were passed to them in smaller Latin forms which were well known, but still mentioned other gods.

There's a couple of ways of looking at the gods themselves though, including just placing the Christian God into the story instead. The Greeks simply encountered him, but could only use their own mythologies to explain this, so these stories became muddied. Or at least that's the sort of thinking you might encounter.

Or that they simply added in the gods because they believed them to be helping them, just as a soldier in the Middle Ages might pray to god before battle as well and find him "there" even if never literally seeing or speaking to him.

It would be a few more hundred years before people started to be a bit more skeptical of the events of the Trojan War as passed down by bards and later written down in the form we know it as (well, the two main surviving accounts of many that are now lost). But there were still people who considered them authentic accounts of a war well into the modern age, with Schliemann having been made many efforts to "prove" these stories true, to the point of fabrication or mishandling of archeological finds to try and fit the narrative into it. Today we are fairly certain that Troy existed, and we're fairly certain the site as identified by Calvert (and later more famously, by Schliemann) is indeed the true Troy, and we know that it went through many wars, including one that would match up chronologically to around when we could place such a Trojan War, but we don't believe that the details laid out in the Iliad are historical (though whoever Homer was/were he/she/they were clearly inspired by elements, including some similarly named individuals that didn't have the exact roles detailed in the book but were popular in the region that Troy was in. So there are elements there.

Do you mean regarding the gods being present, or just that it was written by pagans?

All history books from before the common era were written by pagans, but they didn't doubt the historicity of say the battles at Thermopylae or Actium. Early Christian historians, such as Clement of Alexandria, actually dealt with this "problem" early on by still recognising important historical gains made by pagans. So there was no outright dismissal of everything pagan, just some cultural elements -- but even that was a very slow process and mostly occurred later.