Post by Ten on Jan 22, 2010 22:49:00 GMT -5
This is for Slug. Hope it's interesting and/or entertaining.
Ten's Take on History:
half unverified folklore, half historical fact, half baseless conjecture, and half critical math failure
The Vikings
In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but he wasn't the first to "discover" America (and he wasn't that great of a guy, either). The actual first Europeans to sail over here were a group of Norsemen, with a leader by the name of Leif Ericson. Can you believe that? He's supposed to be this beast of a Viking, and he's named Leif. That sounds like leaf. Can you really tremble like a leaf in fear of some dude named Leif? I thought not.
His dad was an outlaw named Erik the Red, which sounds much better. Red was the first Norseman to found a settlement in Greenland, which -- according to Adam of Bremen -- was named Greenland because the people there had green skin.
Whatever.
Red more likely named Greenland Greenland because some parts of the geography are, in fact, green. Iceland, on the other hand, got its name because Flóki Vilgerðarson saw ice on it. As you can see, these are very creative people.
I find it interesting to note that the Nordic word for "ice land" is ísland, which looks just like island. I'd always wondered where that silent "s" came from, ever since I got tickets to the Adventure Island pirate theme park and tried to tell Dad they'd misspelled island.
Anyway, the Vikings used to be a rowdy bunch. They were some wicked awesome sailors, and they used that advantage to go sailing around Europe and pillaging villages, which is fun to say. Pillage village. So having beast longboats and beards, they found it only natural to go around attacking and raiding and stealing and terrorizing the general population and writing in runes and naming their sons Leif. With their beast longboats, it was easy to appear out of nowhere and take off with the loot before anyone knew what was happening. If I'm not mistaken, I'm guessing that's (one reason?) why people in Britain started building castles: nothing stops a berserker like a brick wall. Or a moat.
I do know for a fact, however, that the decline of the "Viking Age", if you will, came in part due to the spread of Christianity. The Church made them become farmers and stop owning slaves. Or something like that.
Also, when someone died they would set them out to sea on a boat and set the boat on fire.
...and that's what comes to mind when I think Vikings.
Resources:
-- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking
-- www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1965/shouldnt-greenland-be-known-as-iceland-and-vice-versa
The Aztecs
My middle school history teacher once recounted to me a story of Europeans who encountered some people in North America. They were friendly folks, and prepared a feast for their European guests, which the Europeans thought was pretty darn awesome. But before they could eat all the delicious food laid out for them, a man came and added the finishing touch by squeezing the blood from a human heart all over the food.
Their guests lost their appetite.
I'm not sure if this story was about the Aztecs or if it even happened, but I'm sure you know what the Aztecs are famous for: human sacrifice. That's always disgusted me. They're a fascinating culture, but I can't get over the whole kill-you-in-public-and-rip-out-your-heart thing. The stupid sun god can starve for all I care.
This sun god, Huitzilopochtli, for whom all that blood was meant as a meal, is also the one who, according to the legend, told some guys where to build a city by showing them this sign: an eagle noming on a snake and sitting on a nopal cactus. That's where the symbol on the Mexican flag comes from.
Even though they were wackos, I do have to thank these guys for their kickbutt food. You've heard the saying "money doesn't grow on trees", right? But in a way, it used to, because the Aztecs used the cacao bean as a form of currency. That cacao bean would be the same bean that chocolate comes from. Aztec nobility loved the stuff. It wasn't chocolate as we know it, though. They made it as a hot, bitter drink -- think hot chocolate meets dark chocolate, without any sugar and with some ground corn. Not my idea of tasty. Still, that is how chocolate originated. Some other good stuff from the Aztecs: corn tortillas, tamales, and guacamole. Guacamole comes from the Nahuatl word "ahuacatl". The Spaniards who came over and heard about it had no idea how to spell or pronounce that, so they called it guacamole.
Speaking of Spaniards, this conquistador Hernándo Cortés came along, buddied up with the Aztecs' enemies, killed Moctezuma II, and spread a bunch of smallpox, which started the decline of the Aztec empire. That's sad and whatnot, but a lot of other cultures considered it good news, seeing as the Aztecs weren't the nicest neighbors in the hood.
Aztecs also had a thing for pyramids, precise calendars that stop at 2012 because by then you just want to get it over with (edit: nevermind, that was the Mayans), and jaguars. They thought jaguars were the coolest. Can you blame them? Anyway, I've been calling them Aztecs this whole time, but I read somewhere that they never called themselves like that (sort of like the Navajo?) and even that they weren't really one unified group. But as long as somebody down there came up with tamales, I'm fine with that.
Resources:
-- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec
-- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobroma_cacao
-- www.wisegeek.com/what-is-guacamole.htm
-- library.thinkquest.org/27981/food.html
So. I have no idea how much time I spent on that. All Slug told me was Vikings and Aztecs, so I meandered around and covered whatever topics came to mind. Hope you learned something. Or maybe even enjoyed reading this. Feedback?
Ten's Take on History:
half unverified folklore, half historical fact, half baseless conjecture, and half critical math failure
The Vikings
In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but he wasn't the first to "discover" America (and he wasn't that great of a guy, either). The actual first Europeans to sail over here were a group of Norsemen, with a leader by the name of Leif Ericson. Can you believe that? He's supposed to be this beast of a Viking, and he's named Leif. That sounds like leaf. Can you really tremble like a leaf in fear of some dude named Leif? I thought not.
His dad was an outlaw named Erik the Red, which sounds much better. Red was the first Norseman to found a settlement in Greenland, which -- according to Adam of Bremen -- was named Greenland because the people there had green skin.
Whatever.
Red more likely named Greenland Greenland because some parts of the geography are, in fact, green. Iceland, on the other hand, got its name because Flóki Vilgerðarson saw ice on it. As you can see, these are very creative people.
I find it interesting to note that the Nordic word for "ice land" is ísland, which looks just like island. I'd always wondered where that silent "s" came from, ever since I got tickets to the Adventure Island pirate theme park and tried to tell Dad they'd misspelled island.
Anyway, the Vikings used to be a rowdy bunch. They were some wicked awesome sailors, and they used that advantage to go sailing around Europe and pillaging villages, which is fun to say. Pillage village. So having beast longboats and beards, they found it only natural to go around attacking and raiding and stealing and terrorizing the general population and writing in runes and naming their sons Leif. With their beast longboats, it was easy to appear out of nowhere and take off with the loot before anyone knew what was happening. If I'm not mistaken, I'm guessing that's (one reason?) why people in Britain started building castles: nothing stops a berserker like a brick wall. Or a moat.
I do know for a fact, however, that the decline of the "Viking Age", if you will, came in part due to the spread of Christianity. The Church made them become farmers and stop owning slaves. Or something like that.
Also, when someone died they would set them out to sea on a boat and set the boat on fire.
...and that's what comes to mind when I think Vikings.
Resources:
-- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking
-- www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1965/shouldnt-greenland-be-known-as-iceland-and-vice-versa
The Aztecs
My middle school history teacher once recounted to me a story of Europeans who encountered some people in North America. They were friendly folks, and prepared a feast for their European guests, which the Europeans thought was pretty darn awesome. But before they could eat all the delicious food laid out for them, a man came and added the finishing touch by squeezing the blood from a human heart all over the food.
Their guests lost their appetite.
I'm not sure if this story was about the Aztecs or if it even happened, but I'm sure you know what the Aztecs are famous for: human sacrifice. That's always disgusted me. They're a fascinating culture, but I can't get over the whole kill-you-in-public-and-rip-out-your-heart thing. The stupid sun god can starve for all I care.
This sun god, Huitzilopochtli, for whom all that blood was meant as a meal, is also the one who, according to the legend, told some guys where to build a city by showing them this sign: an eagle noming on a snake and sitting on a nopal cactus. That's where the symbol on the Mexican flag comes from.
Even though they were wackos, I do have to thank these guys for their kickbutt food. You've heard the saying "money doesn't grow on trees", right? But in a way, it used to, because the Aztecs used the cacao bean as a form of currency. That cacao bean would be the same bean that chocolate comes from. Aztec nobility loved the stuff. It wasn't chocolate as we know it, though. They made it as a hot, bitter drink -- think hot chocolate meets dark chocolate, without any sugar and with some ground corn. Not my idea of tasty. Still, that is how chocolate originated. Some other good stuff from the Aztecs: corn tortillas, tamales, and guacamole. Guacamole comes from the Nahuatl word "ahuacatl". The Spaniards who came over and heard about it had no idea how to spell or pronounce that, so they called it guacamole.
Speaking of Spaniards, this conquistador Hernándo Cortés came along, buddied up with the Aztecs' enemies, killed Moctezuma II, and spread a bunch of smallpox, which started the decline of the Aztec empire. That's sad and whatnot, but a lot of other cultures considered it good news, seeing as the Aztecs weren't the nicest neighbors in the hood.
Aztecs also had a thing for pyramids, precise calendars that stop at 2012 because by then you just want to get it over with (edit: nevermind, that was the Mayans), and jaguars. They thought jaguars were the coolest. Can you blame them? Anyway, I've been calling them Aztecs this whole time, but I read somewhere that they never called themselves like that (sort of like the Navajo?) and even that they weren't really one unified group. But as long as somebody down there came up with tamales, I'm fine with that.
Resources:
-- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec
-- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobroma_cacao
-- www.wisegeek.com/what-is-guacamole.htm
-- library.thinkquest.org/27981/food.html
So. I have no idea how much time I spent on that. All Slug told me was Vikings and Aztecs, so I meandered around and covered whatever topics came to mind. Hope you learned something. Or maybe even enjoyed reading this. Feedback?
