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stonebro: Were there any major wars that we know of in NA or SA in the early 1000s? The Maya and Inca weren't really established until centuries later, or perhaps they were but that is lost to history now, with a wee bit of help from the spanish. We know very little about any inter-wars on the american continent due to the lack of records of that era. Some shit probably happened, but ... with no sources, you can't know.
As pointed out before. We do know they were happening but information are scarce
Inca were power late in that time period
Maya were not mate. Their peak was BEFORE 11th century.
Aztecs rised into power in 12th to 14th century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec

SA history is complex one yet it is full of holes, missing data. We do know that it was not peaceful. We do not know much about single battles, but we have information about how empires rose and fell, some data on thousands of prisoners of war being massacred by Aztecs and few others. There was war there mate. bloody and huge in scale.
There is massive misconception about aztecs, maya and inca. They were not similar they were as different as Brittan and Ottoman, like Prussia and Castilie. Occupying different periods of time and geography.
My knowledge of NA history is a bit lacking so I won't be able to say much about that part of the video but it is hard to imagine that before white men arrived ingenious population lived in peace with each other, that there was no slaughtering of children and women between various tribes.


Well, of course the data is limited. What else would you expect? Do you have better data than what the video shows?
That's why it is untruthful. It tries to make a point which is wrong. and I do have better data than this in video. Books and research. The author of video seems to had just opened the wiki and started pasting the stuff. To create a proper video, one which would truly represent war of past millennium a better chunk of year would have to be spend on it. Recording not only battles but changes in countries, movement of populations, diseases and so on. Only from extrapolating of that data you can actually make a proper video.


The problem is everybody has a pretty limited scope here; the time they have been alive. Whatever came before it doesn't really count. What the video shows is that there is no significant decline in the number of major conflicts going on in our time vs. several centuries back. There is a decline in total number of people killed of course, and what with international aid and such to conflict zones the civilian populace no longer faces years of famine and constant looming threat after an armed conflict. Well, mostly anyway.
This is a bit of my pet peeve. People saying how life was better in the past and now everything is worse. If they are speaking about 4 years ago. a decade or even two. Fine. Life is not a constant line.
Anyone who claims that life was better in 19th century for example that it was more peaceful deserves a punch in the face. They look at one thing without looking at the bigger picture. Like battles. We know practically every single one which happened in WW2. We know about all major battles of Napoleon. Yet we do know only big battles during crusades. We don't know about the time crusaders burn down yet another village on their way to Holy Land.
What came before does count when we are talking how we leave in dangerous times and past was better.

The video shows nothing. It does not provide any useful information. Not about whether really past was better, or nothing really changed. It is fun little thing which I suspect was the aim of the author, he never really meant to make a statement.
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mystral: No amount of pampered Western kids who want to convince themselves otherwise in order to whine about how their lives suck and humanity being so bad will change that.
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stonebro: Yeah, we do, but in terms of the sheer number of wars we start we're basically going at the same rate as always. It's only been 40-odd years since the last major conflict, 4% of the timespan shown in the video, and most of us on here haven't been alive for more than about half that long.

It's all about perspective, and this at least shows that the "peacefulness" of modern society may just be a bias caused by our short horizons and limited lifespans. In truth we are just as warmongering as ever - the scale of the provocation needed to launch another major conflict is much higher than before due to sociopolitical structure, yes - but to those who think that we are past the point where a major world or continental war is likely to ever happen again, well, take your pick from past periods that have exibited the same apparent "peacefulness" as that of today.
Agreed, it's just that a major war between two nations who own nuclear weapons would be so destructive not only for them but for everyone else too that nobody wants to think about it actually happening.
It's hard to blame people for wishfully thinking it can't happen.

Trying to claim that the situation nowadays is just as bad as it used to be, say, only 200 years ago shows a serious lack of perspective however.
Presenting relatively minor modern conflicts like the Iraq wars as almost as bad as major past ones like the 30 years war is simply a gross misrepresentation of historical facts.
It is certainly euro-centric, but still nice for the limited materials the author used. If I were still teaching I would use it in my cartographic propaganda section. Aside from the few markers in Japan I saw, there are two ways (at least) people can read this map: 1) Europeans are responsible for all wars, or 2) as someone above pointed out, history only revolves around Europe.

There is some archaeological evidence of large scale conflict in the Americas and Africa prior to European contact. Through Mexico down through central and South America there are written records which may document conflicts. Same with parts of Africa. Perhaps not detailed casualty counts. The problem is finding the data consolidated in a usable format.

For known/estimated casualties, I would have used graduated circles in place of explosions. There really is no need to standardize the data based on a proportion of the population. Change in point symbol size is appropriate, whether it be the explosions or boring graduated circles. If this were a choropleth (area shaded) map, then data standardization is necessary to take into account the change in the size of the political boundaries. If circles are used, perhaps two different colors for known and estimated numbers. The Mercator map is fine, but there are better projections out there. Granted those design decisions are not as dramatic as what was used.

Over all it is still a nice animated map, just lacking some hard to find data in that 1000 year time frame. It would certainly lend itself to better interactivity and higher resolution.
Most people in this world know absolutely nothing that's for sure. Especially the American people know 0. They always think their so known government ( which isn't their government anyway) fights for freedom and democracy. What a joke.
I'm from Austria and i know all too well what it means when the US comes to bring freedom which is nothing else than mass slaughter by the very US. And who controls US hmmmmm, let's check it out.
It's not for nothing called in this world USRAEL.

We the jews control the USA and the Americans know it,

Ariel Sharon, 2001

There is nothing more to add here i think

PS: I know more about the US history than about 99% of the US population.....
Post edited March 31, 2011 by slash11
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slash11: Most people in this world know absolutely nothing that's for sure. Especially the American people know 0. They always think their so known government ( which isn't their government anyway) fights for freedom and democracy. What a joke.
I'm from Austria and i know all too well what it means when the US comes to bring freedom which is nothing else than mass slaughter by the very US. And who controls US hmmmmm, let's check it out.
It's not for nothing called in this world USRAEL.

We the jews control the USA and the Americans know it,

Ariel Sharon, 2001

There is nothing more to add here i think

PS: I know more about the US history than about 99% of the US population.....
The only thing to add, imho, is that I fail to see what your rant has to do with the topic.
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slash11: Most people in this world know absolutely nothing that's for sure. Especially the American people know 0. They always think their so known government ( which isn't their government anyway) fights for freedom and democracy. What a joke.
I'm from Austria and i know all too well what it means when the US comes to bring freedom which is nothing else than mass slaughter by the very US. And who controls US hmmmmm, let's check it out.
It's not for nothing called in this world USRAEL.

We the jews control the USA and the Americans know it,

Ariel Sharon, 2001

There is nothing more to add here i think

PS: I know more about the US history than about 99% of the US population.....
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mystral: The only thing to add, imho, is that I fail to see what your rant has to do with the topic.
Almost everything since it is about all the wars in the past which is instigated by the same group of people over and over again....
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slash11: PS: I know more about the US history than about 99% of the US population.....
That's a rather offensive generalisation perpetuated by Europeans. Sure there are Americans who know bugger all about American history let alone the history of any other country but the same can be said about Austrians. The American school system might be very American-centric but assuming all Americans are the same is just a stereotype.
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slash11: PS: I know more about the US history than about 99% of the US population.....
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Delixe: That's a rather offensive generalisation perpetuated by Europeans. Sure there are Americans who know bugger all about American history let alone the history of any other country but the same can be said about Austrians. The American school system might be very American-centric but assuming all Americans are the same is just a stereotype.
This has nothing to do with stereotype and yes i have met Americans which are very good educated but that doesn't mean they know something about the TRUE history of America and not some propaganda pieces....
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slash11: This has nothing to do with stereotype and yes i have met Americans which are very good educated but that doesn't mean they know something about the TRUE history of America and not some propaganda pieces....
All stereotypes are based on some facts. They wouldn't be as common if they weren't, regardless they are just generalisations and should be taken as such. Just because Justin Bieber thinks Canada is a state of the USA and can't point to it on a globe it doesn't mean all Canadians are that dumb.

Austrians have a reputation as being German apologists who open up their borders as soon as Germany goes to war. I'm sure you would find that offensive and untrue but never the less that's the stereotype.
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slash11: PS: I know more about the US history than about 99% of the US population.....
And I know that 99% of Austrians still think Austria was the first victim of World War 2....
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mystral: The only thing to add, imho, is that I fail to see what your rant has to do with the topic.
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slash11: Almost everything since it is about all the wars in the past which is instigated by the same group of people over and over again....
Right...
Which group of people would that be, incidentally?
Americans didn't actually matter for most of the period and neither did Jews.
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slash11: PS: I know more about the US history than about 99% of the US population.....
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SimonG: And I know that 99% of Austrians still think Austria was the first victim of World War 2....
This is never the truth and 99% ? NEVER
And who said that we have been a victim ?
We the Austrians voted for it and almost no one complained about it back in the time...
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swaimiac: Aside from the few markers in Japan I saw, there are two ways (at least) people can read this map: 1) Europeans are responsible for all wars, or 2) as someone above pointed out, history only revolves around Europe.
Which simply proves how misleading and thus critically dangerous the presentation can be. I'd dare to argue that had a Chinese, Russian, Indian, African, (read basically non European country with a long history) author designed the little application, the showcased conflicts would have been different.

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swaimiac: There really is no need to standardize the data based on a proportion of the population.
That's a rather bold statement.
If you have nations with populations reaching several million wage war it is only logical to assume more casualties than the same situation with several thousand inhabitants involved. Thus the 'size of conflict' is misleading if you do not scale it properly.

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slash11: [rant] USA [rant]
{sarcasm} You're right. The Jews used their tool the United states of America to wage most wars between 1000 and 1500!{/sarcasm}
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mystral: Americans didn't actually matter for most of the period
Or even exist, for that matter.

The group slash is talking about was clearly the Bavarian Illuminati together with the Elders of Zion, the Freemasons, Cosa Nostra and The Walt Disney Company.
And out of the woodwork comes the antisemittic right-wing austrian puppet.

All we need now is the Illuminati. Who will take the order?
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bazilisek: The group slash is talking about was clearly the Bavarian Illuminati together with the Elders of Zion, the Freemasons, Cosa Nostra and The Walt Disney Company.
ROFL, I rest my case.
Post edited March 31, 2011 by stonebro