Byzantine Empire Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Tales of Times Forgotten

The Long, Strange, Fascinating History of Santa Claus

Have you ever wondered where the story of Santa Claus comes from, why he is said to bring presents to children at Christmas, why he is said to live at the North Pole, or why he is said to have a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer? Well, as it turns out, the history of Santa Claus is an incredibly long, twisted, and strange one.

It involves a building project by a Byzantine emperor, a story about a father preparing to sell his own daughters into prostitution, a hoard of stolen human bones reputed to have magical properties, armies of Crusading knights, Protestant zealots, the author of “Rip Van Winkle” and “Sleepy Hollow,” a poem you probably read as a child but didn’t realize how influential it was, a “Nast”-y nineteenth-century political cartoonist, and Coca-Cola.

This may seem like a bizarre assortment incredibly disparate things, but I promise you, everything I just mentioned is actually vital to the development of Santa Claus as we know him today. Let’s go all the way back to the beginning of it all in late antiquity and embark on this odyssey together to discover the origins of Santa Claus!

The Truth about the Archimedes Palimpsest

If you have an interest in ancient science or mathematics, chances are you have probably heard at some point about the Archimedes Palimpsest. According to the narrative that New Atheist writers and media outlets keep pushing, the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse (lived c. 287 – c. 212 BC) wrote groundbreaking mathematical treatises that were millennia ahead of their time.

Then, according to the standard narrative being pushed, in the thirteenth century AD, ignorant, obscurantist Christians who did not care about science or mathematics erased the text of the manuscript containing the last known copies of several of Archimedes’s treatises and reused the parchment to make a prayer book. Now—or so the story goes—Archimedes’s previously lost groundbreaking works are being recovered through the brilliancy of modern secular technology.

Unfortunately, this narrative that I have just outlined is deeply, deeply misrepresentative and based on an extremely selective presentation of the evidence. If the media would tell the full story of the Archimedes Palimpsest, we would be getting a very different narrative—a narrative not about how religion is inherently dangerous and destructive, but rather a far more complex narrative in which religious individuals are neither inherently evil nor inherently good but simply human beings capable of both good and evil.

Why Lead Poisoning Probably Did Not Cause the Downfall of the Roman Empire

Many people seem to have the impression that everyone in ancient Rome suffered from lead poisoning because the Romans used pipes made of lead. Indeed, many people seem to think that this was a major contributing factor in the decline of the Roman Empire. This idea is largely inaccurate, but there is some truth behind it. It is certain that some people in ancient Rome did suffer from lead poisoning. Nonetheless, we have very little evidence to indicate that lead poisoning was ever a widespread ailment on the scale that most people seem to imagine. Contrary to popular speculation, it is highly unlikely that lead poisoning played a significant role in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. It is also highly unlikely that lead poisoning made any Roman emperors go insane.

Who Was the Last Roman Emperor? A Harder Question than You Might Think.

Many different people throughout history have been described as “the last Roman emperor.” You may then be left wondering, “Who really was the last Roman emperor?” Unfortunately, a direct and concise answer to this question is impossible, because the answer depends entirely on who you think counts as a “Roman emperor.” The fact is that there are all kinds of different people who could potentially be considered the “last emperor of the Roman Empire,” many of whom were not even Roman.