The WrestlingSmarks History Club

[Barry Poppins]

Was having a good old conversation with @Switchblake and decided to go ahead and make this thread as a general discussion about history, historical events, and ancient cultures.

Chances are it'll just be @Chris, @Loochblade, and I (occasionally a few other folks), having a good time talking about ancient cultures, medieval history, or even 20th century history stuff. Still, I think it'll be a fun exercise to talk about random stuff. So feel free to talk about something historical.

I think as a guideline, we'll limit discussions to before the year 2000 unless it directly ties into modern events (see: Vladimir Putin becoming acting President of Russia in 1999 leading to his election in 2000, and all events that have occurred as a consequence)

 

[O-Blaze]

I mean I've talked about loving history, so I'll probably join in for some discussion, and willing to probably learn stuff I don't know as well.

 

[Butters]

I was hoping this was about the history of WrestlingSmarks and we would dunk on nerds that no longer post here.

 

[Barry Poppins]

So, here's a humorous little tale from the 300s BC, during the time of Classical Greece. The background is that Thebes and Sparta had been battling against one another for a solid seven years, and both parties had finally come to a ceasefire to get a treaty together.

The Theban leader Epaminondas and the Spartan Diarch Agesilaus II (In Sparta they had two kings at the same time, from two different families, long story), had come to an agreement and terms. So in writing the peace treaty, Sparta swore peace in the name of Sparta, and their vassals. Thebes swore peace only in the name of Thebes. So the peace was decided.

Except nope, the next day, Epaminondas demanded that Thebes be allowed to swear peace not only for Thebes, but also their vassals. Agesilaus II, thoroughly confused, denied the request, because the Boeotians were "independent" and Thebes didn't swear beforehand. Epaminondas then allegedly exclaimed that if Thebes was not allowed to swear for their vassals, then the Laconians (who were vassal cities of Sparta), should also be "independent". Agesilaus was of course, angry at such a notion, and refused outright.

So Epaminondas and the Theban representatives left Sparta in protest, and they raised another army. Thebes ended up winning the following battle (the Battle of Leuctra), and would have a hegemony over classical Greece until Philip II of Macedon (father of Alexander the Horse Boy Conquerer).

 

[O-Blaze]

I was hoping this was about the history of WrestlingSmarks and we would dunk on nerds that no longer post here.

We should start that club.

 

[Chris]

Even if it is not true, you must believe in ancient history

 

[Chris]

Lately I've been enjoying keeping up with these History.com articles

Articles | HISTORY

Find and read HISTORY.com stories.

www.history.com

They're small, bite-sized snippets of very random and diverse topics written by modern historians I surprisingly recognized from previous work which gave it some more credibility to me. It's also nice that they're going to give you the most updated info on a topic, sometimes that's harder to find what the general consensus is vs what it used to be because of new evidence discovered.

Here's a very good one on the Fall of the Bronze Age and all the leading theories, most of which are all deemed a reason why now, it was the accumulation of all of these factors happening at once, not just a few of them

What Caused the Bronze Age Collapse? | HISTORY

More than 3,200 years ago, a vast, interconnected civilization thrived. Then it suddenly collapsed. What happened?

www.history.com

 

[Barry Poppins]

The Bronze Age Collapse is so interesting because we don't have records from that time period so we simply have to go off what we can find.

Everything bad happening all at once is probably the most likely theory.

 

[Chris]

The Bronze Age Collapse is so interesting because we don't have records from that time period so we simply have to go off what we can find.

Everything bad happening all at once is probably the most likely theory.

Important to note that some being unfortunate coincidences are likely, but a lot were also caused because of the other. The "sea peoples" for example were most likely driven to their invasions by various of the other causes such as climate change or natural disasters and not just a random new people coming to attack.

Which certainly tracks bc everything points to those same reasons, plus outside pressure from stringer tribes being what tended to always drive the historic Steppe tribe invasions and then later the Viking ones. They never came out of nowhere, they were running from their own problems and just found people that knew how to write.

 

[Barry Poppins]

Yeah, I believe it's called the Systems Collapse Theory?

 

[Chris]

Yeah, I believe it's called the Systems Collapse Theory?

Yeah it's essentially saying there was a domino affect, unsure which really was the first domino but they eventually lead to the global trade being disrupted. And populations had ballooned to sizes that needed those trade routes to supply enough resources to everyone, so that's the system that collapsed. I think of it a lot like how the Great Depression was a global event despite centering on America's systems failing.

 

[Chris]

Using that topic to go into another I've been interested in recently, but a big part of that trade systems collapse that I don't usually see expanded upon, just implied, is the food and subsequent starvation that resulted from losing the access. But I think if you delve deeper, you'd find that the specific food access they mean is through the Silk Road coming from the East Asian civilizations that have crazy records from very early times, but we've not been able to translate a lot to English or have it interpreted by a native to us yet so it's still fairly unknown knowledge.

We know that they perfected certain agricultural methods which resulted in abundant food, but the more that comes out of their records, the more we've been able to piece together some more info (and debunk some previous theories) about nomad societies of the steppe, but we've also just been able to learn about all these new (but old) narratives and political intrigues that we haven't gone over a million times already like Rome or Alexander the Great

 

[Loochblade]

I'm a bit late with this... but to celebrate the opening of this History thread:



...that is all. Please continue with your ongoing discussion.

 

[Kairi HoHo]

I was also a History Buff growing up it was probably my favorite Subject in School especially going back to ages we rarely talk about. I swear I thought I made a Thread but I think that was towards Greek Mythology more so than real life history of the World.

 

[Chris]

You go back far enough and the fun becomes deciphering what you think is myth vs history. One common theory is that the demi-gods of Greek Mythology were added to the mythos later and based on actual humans that accomplished great feats and were deified themselves