Ancient artifacts Archives - Page 4 of 7 - Tales of Times Forgotten

The Motivations behind Human Sacrifice

For people today, the fact that so many peoples throughout history have practiced human sacrifice seems absolutely baffling and horrifying. We tend to think of human sacrifice as the ultimate act of barbarism, an act that epitomizes everything savage and uncivilized about our species. Nonetheless, it is important for us to understand why people have historically engaged in this practice.

Human sacrifice has occurred in virtually every part of the world at some point in time and has occurred in some part of the world during every historical time period. Thus, whether we like it or not, understanding the motivations behind human sacrifice is a part of understanding what it means to be human.

Were Ancient People Conscious?

In 1976, the American psychologist Julian Jaynes (lived 1920 – 1997) published a controversial book titled The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. In this book, Jaynes claimed that human beings were not conscious of their own thoughts until around 1000 BC and that stories about gods speaking to people originated from people hearing their own inner voices and mistaking them for the voices of external deities telling them what to do.

Jaynes’s claims were regarded as fringe, baseless, and bizarre even when he first proposed them back in the 1970s and today they are almost universally regarded by psychologists as the debunked relic of an earlier, less scientific stage in the development of modern psychology. Nonetheless, Jaynes’s hypothesis of the bicameral mind has garnered something of a cult following among non-scholars and has had considerable influence in popular culture, so I suppose it is worth writing a lengthy rebuttal to it.

Were the Greeks Really Obsessed with the Golden Ratio?

The so-called “Golden Ratio,” or φ, occurs when the ratio of the greater of two quantities to the lesser of two quantities is equivalent to the ratio of the sum of the two quantities to the greater of the two quantities. Expressed using incomprehensible math symbols, it looks like this:

Many people believe that the “Golden Ratio” is the pinnacle of aesthetic perfection and that, the closer something is to the Golden Ratio, the more beautiful it is automatically. Many people also believe that the ancient Greeks were obsessed with the Golden Ratio and that they incorporated it into all their buildings and works of art. Unfortunately for those who love a good math story, we have no good evidence to support either of these conclusions.

In fact, the Golden Ratio is not even mentioned in any Greek text until as late as the early third century BC. The Greeks were arguably fascinated with the idea of using mathematical proportions in art to a certain extent, but they were by no means obsessed with the Golden Ratio in particular. The story of how we came to believe that the Greeks were obsessed with the Golden Ratio, though, is as fascinating as it is bizarre. It involves a friend of Leonardo da Vinci, an eccentric nineteenth-century German psychologist, and Donald Duck.

What Did Ancient Greek Music Sound Like?

Nearly everyone loves music and the ancient Greeks loved music as much as anyone. Many of the poems that have survived to us from ancient Greece are actually song lyrics that were originally meant to be sung. Unfortunately, nearly all ancient Greek music has been irretrievably lost; no one alive will ever hear the original choruses of Aischylos, Sophokles, or Euripides sung with their original melodies.

Remarkably, though, a number of ancient Greek musical compositions have survived to the present day with musical notation, allowing us to reconstruct their original melodies—or at least something reasonably close to their original melodies. These few surviving compositions offer us a tiny window into a world of music that has been gone for well over a thousand years.

Was Hypatia of Alexandria Black?

A lot of people today seem to have quite a fascination with the subject of race in the ancient world. I frequently encounter questions on Quora asking whether various historical figures from ancient times were “Black” or “white.” Elsewhere online, I often encounter claims about the racial identities of people from ancient times.

Back in September 2019, I wrote an article in response to various articles I had encountered claiming that the Roman emperor Septimius Severus was Black. In that article, I concluded that, while you could certainly describe Septimius Severus as what we today would call a “person of color,” it would be misleading to describe him as Black without any kind of careful qualification.

Another historical figure from ancient times whose racial identity seems to provoke a great deal of controversy is the early fifth-century AD Neoplatonist philosopher and mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, who is often cited (quite anachronistically) as an example of a Black woman who excelled in STEM. In this article, I will answer the question: “Was Hypatia of Alexandria really Black?”

Why Do Ancient Greek Sculptures All Have Such Tiny Penises?

Whenever I talk about ancient Greek sculpture, there is always one question that everyone always asks me. It is not “How did the style of Hellenistic sculptures differ from the style of earlier Classical sculptures?” Nor is it “Can you tell me more about how ancient Greek sculptures were originally painted?” No, of course, not. The question everyone always asks me is “Why do they all have such tiny penises?” I have been asked this question so many times that I feel compelled to answer it.

King Midas Was Actually a Real Person

We have no evidence whatsoever for the existence of the vast majority of figures that appear in classical mythology. For instance, we have no evidence for the existence of Perseus, Herakles, Theseus, Achilleus, or Odysseus. Nonetheless, there is at least one major figure from classical mythology who was definitely a real person: King Midas.

No, really. I am not kidding. Believe it or not, King Midas—the king who, according to legend, was so greedy and foolish that he wished for everything he touched to turn to gold—was actually a historical king of the ancient kingdom of Phrygia who ruled in the late eighth century BC.

We know Midas was a real king because he is mentioned in contemporary Assyrian records as having attacked King Sargon II of Assyria and there are surviving inscriptions from his reign. Nonetheless, even though King Midas was a real person, the famous story of the golden touch is undoubtedly ahistorical.

Eight Things That Would Surprise Most People about Life in the Ancient World

There are a whole lot of things that would surprise most people about what life was like in ancient times. As historians sometimes say, “The past is a foreign country.” When reading about the past, we learn about people whose lives were, in many ways, utterly different from our own. Here are a few facts about life in the ancient world that would probably instantly shock a modern person travelling into the past.

The Real Reason Why the Venus de Milo Is So Famous

Everyone has heard of the Venus de Milo. It is easily one of the most famous, most instantly recognizable sculptures of all time. It been referenced, imitated, and spoofed countless times in popular culture. Have you ever stopped to wonder why it is so famous, though? Why is it that we all revere this one particular statue? Well, as it turns out, the present-day hype over the Venus de Milo is, to a large extent, the result of wounded French national pride in the early nineteenth century.

What Makes Alexander the Great Different from Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun?

King Alexandros III of Makedonia, or, as he is more commonly known today, “Alexander the Great,” still looms large in our history books and in popular culture, where he is often portrayed as a benevolent ruler and a glorious conqueror, spreading the light of Greek civilization to the supposedly barbarous peoples of the east. In Greece today, Alexander is widely revered as a national hero.

Nonetheless, we must wonder why it is that Alexander is portrayed as such a glorious conqueror; whereas other historical figures known for their conquests, such as Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, are remembered as ruthless barbarians and destroyers of civilization.