- This topic has 4 voices and 11 replies.
-
Posts
-
Here's a short article about the Gauls in their fight against the Romans:Asterix rewrite call after Gauls reassessedSome of the things that the article says about the Gauls:
They also crafted metalwork just as complex as anything produced by the Romans, even before the Roman invasion in 52BC…..”What we have found here proves that the Gauls were much more civilised than we thought,” said Matthieu Poux, the archaeology professor who is heading the dig.
Question – doesn't it seem that we frequently hear similar kinds of reports nowadays? I mean it seems that we hear that ancient civilizations are normally “more advanced than previously thought”. It's as if all ages prior to ours were…..well, perhaps not quite “idiots”, but rather primitive compared to our own. C.S. Lewis mentioned something about a bias toward previous ages which he called “chronological snobbery”. I think he used the term in a slightly different context than this particular issue I'm discussing, but it seems like it might apply here nonetheless.
Not saying this is the intention of the author, but you might want to be mindful that the author might have a grudge against Rome trying to downplay it's significance historically because of its contribution to our modern Western society. There could be an agenda here and the author is latching onto information that might aid in demoting Rome. This happens all the time in historical scholarship.
So you're saying that rather than trying to elevate Gaul, the writer could potentially be trying to decrease the stature of Rome? Interesting…I hadn't thought of that. Sounds like an historical means of “giving it to the man” for academic types. I do wonder wonder about motives for doing this….perhaps a grudge over history (e.g. the writer is an expert on Gallic history and “just wants to represent” or maybe the person has some modern-day issue to push (e.g. the writer wants to decrease Western-centrism as it relates to Rome/Christianity from the history books). Which do you think it is?
So you're saying that rather than trying to elevate Gaul, the writer could potentially be trying to decrease the stature of Rome? Interesting…I hadn't thought of that. Sounds like an historical means of “giving it to the man” for academic types. I do wonder wonder about motives for doing this….perhaps a grudge over history (e.g. the writer is an expert on Gallic history and “just wants to represent” or maybe the person has some modern-day issue to push (e.g. the writer wants to decrease Western-centrism as it relates to Rome/Christianity from the history books). Which do you think it is?
I'll have to read the article to be more certain. All I'm saying is you have to be mindful just in case so you don't get hornswaggled (I always wanted to use that word). 🙂
Might just be some new evidence… we should stay tuned.
+1. I think we have to be open minded (yet cautious) enough to accept new discoveries and not view them as an agenda. Just because the Gauls were, maybe, more advanced than we had originally thought, doesn't mean the Romans are any less important.JMONot to go way off here, but if someone wrote an essay on how unfairly the British treated the Irish, that doesn't mean the author is anti-British.
Might just be some new evidence… we should stay tuned.
+1. I think we have to be open minded (yet cautious) enough to accept new discoveries and not view them as an agenda. Just because the Gauls were, maybe, more advanced than we had originally thought, doesn't mean the Romans are any less important.JMONot to go way off here, but if someone wrote an essay on how unfairly the British treated the Irish, that doesn't mean the author is anti-British.
Yes you are correct ski, but historians are humans too. The topic obviously interested the writer for some reason, and what were they doing looking for such evidence, if they were not curious about the level of technological development the Gauls possessed in comparison to the standard bearer of Rome? There is an agenda either to publish something nobody else would think of for notoriety, or for the reason I suggested above…namely to diminish Rome's dominance/specialness in some way because it behooves the writer to do so. If you will recall I was discussing the possibility of a Scandanavian Troy on AI-Jane. Some quack actually tried to tie evidence together that Troy was actually further North than Asia Minor. Such “histories” are not to be taken seriously as they are just designed to sensationalize a topic for a short time until common sense returns.
…namely to diminish Rome's dominance/specialness in some way because it behooves the writer to do so.
Without a doubt some historians are on an agenda and not always for a good purpose, and I understand and don't disagree with what you're saying, but the reason I don't really agree with the quoted sentence is because the barbarian Visigoths, Francs, Celts, Vandals, etc became Europe. So in that sense, they were “special” too. I don't think this particular author is on any agenda. If he discovered that the Gauls were more advanced than previously thought, that's kinda cool.I could very well be wrong, but that's sort of how I look at.
Upon briefly re-reading the original article, I agree, Ski, it doesn't sound like its author is on any particular agenda. Here is something from the end of the article:
“The Asterix albums will need to be completely rewritten, as they are based on the typical image of the Gauls which has been passed down through the centuries, one of a prehistoric man who lives in the forest.”
So if historians had previously believed the Gauls were “prehistoric”, any evidence of them living in a more civilized manner, in villages/cities, using complex tools or whatever, would make the history books be re-written. It's probably a good idea to be cautious of artificial praise for historical civilizations as a means of “hatin'” on another such civilization, but I don't really think that is the case with the Gauls-Romans article.
I don't know Phid, that excerpt you quoted reeks of agenda to me. The words “need” and “typical” show that the author disdains conventional wisdom. But that's just my trained History major ears perking up. 🙂
Hmmm…perhaps there's a lesson in here somewhere (including for me). I tried to search for more on the topic and was intrigued by this “Asterix album” referred to. What is it? A medieval sourcebook? An illuminated manuscript? Well, not exactly…..look here. So if they want to rewrite that Asterix album, well, hmmmm….
show that the author disdains conventional wisdom.
Or maybe he's just questioning it.I have a question, where did the documented history of the Germanic et.al. tribes come from anyway? Was it from Roman historians? If so, couldn't one say that the historical records were biased against the tribes?
show that the author disdains conventional wisdom.
Or maybe he's just questioning it.I have a question, where did the documented history of the Germanic et.al. tribes come from anyway? Was it from Roman historians? If so, couldn't one say that the historical records were biased against the tribes?
Good point, but they were also magnified to be the “great adversary” by Caesar and Tacitus. They were perceived as barbarians yes (as were Christians by later Roman writers such as Celsus), but worthy as well because Rome was so vexed by them. All I'm saying is it's a very hard stretch to portray the Gauls as anything other than “uncivlized” when compared to the Romans. They had nothing comparable to Rome's achievements…..so when a historian all of a sudden decries them as more advanced, I have to question why since this hasn't been questioned as far back as Edward Gibbon.
