Posted March 31, 2011
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?
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.
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.