The answer to "How did these Ancient People do this????" is basically always
1. A lot of dudes. Just a ton of fucking people from beginning to end of the process.
2. Ancient people weren't stupid, they just figured shit out the same way we do: fuck around until you find out.
3. We're gonna plan this out and it's gonna take ten fucking years, and you will cope.
4. Sticks and string are surprisingly versatile and can be used for a variety of purposes, like moving stuff and making sure things are even and go in the spot you wanted to put them in!
5. I want to make this easier and more efficient to move. If I put this on the round thing and push, it will move. If I put this in water, it will move. If I get some animals and rope and have a whole bunch of them drag it, it will move. All of these things are a better option than one guy trying to pick the whole fucking thing up.
"I'm not calling the people who believe in this conspiracy theory racist" I am. They're racist. Maybe not out of malice, but the fact that they believe in this is in itself racist. These conspiracies are always about brown people. Machu Pichu, the Pyramids, Göbekli Tepe, Easter Island, it is ALWAYS POC. It's never the Parthenon, it's never the Colliseum, despite the fact that these were built around the same time as some of the other sites these conspiracy chucklefucks like to throw around, it's never something fucking European. It's always "primitive people" with "stone tools" and "no understanding of modern engineering" so "clearly someone must have taught them this or given them the technology because CLEARLY they were just too Primitive and Savage to figure it out themselves." Fuck off with that shit.
These days, lots of public libraries have a "library of things" collection where you can check out kitchen appliances or yard tools or toys, and, as a children's library assistant, the most popular library of things item that I handle regularly is a plastic scepter thingy called like "unicorn princess magic wand". And whenever I check it out I make a big show of looking at the little kid and being like "do you solemnly swear to use your unicorn princess magic powers only for good and never for evil?"
And pretty much without fail, the little kid will get the world's most mischievous grin and go "I'm gonna use it for EVIL!!!"
if they're gonna remake The Princess Bride, it should open with a kid sick in bed scrolling on his phone. his grandpa arrives with a gift--it's a DVD player with a disc already inside. grandpa hooks it up to the TV and presses play. and we all just watch the original 1987 film again.
I wonder how many people on Tumblr got to the end of Slay the Princess and got punched in the fucking teeth by the self-portrait in the credits when they realised that the game's artist and scenario editor is the same person who drew this:
@oyavaski i think the funniest part of this is you thinking that this is fake because.....some of us are the same age and we have normal tumblr names i guess lmao????
Jewish baby named Edgardo Mortara is seemingly about to die in Bologna, 1851
Catholic nanny secretly baptises him to save his soul, which she’s not exactly the kind of authority who can do that, but w/e, it’s interpreted by the church as valid later
Kid survives
1857 her secret gets out, a baptising makes a kid a Catholic according to the Church and a Catholic can’t be raised in a non-Catholic household in the Papal States, so the church authorises the police to kidnap Edgardo from his family
Raised personally by Pope Pius IX, Jewish family not allowed to take him back due to Church doctrine, this action destroys the family with grief and despair
This case gets international infamy with the Pope not understanding why everyone’s shiting on him for doing this, including allies
Emperor Napoleon III shifts from opposing Italian unification to supporting it as a direct consequence
Bologna falls the next year, 1859
Kingdom of Italy forms 1861
By 1870 Rome is lost to the Italians and the Papal States are no more
(Edgardo Mortara goes on to become Father Mortara)
(He dies in Belgium in 1940 three months before the Nazis occupied the nation, which if he’d have lived he would’ve been persecuted as a Jew)
Fun fact: the Catholic Church did not stop doing this after Edgaro Mortara. During WW2, many Jewish children were put in convents or catholic-run orphanages for their own safety. Sounds nice right? Except after the war ended, when parents or surviving relative went back to claim their children, the church went, “uhhh, actually they’re catholic now, no take backs!”
The most infamous of these cases was the Finaly affair. Two Jewish children in France, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were placed in a Catholic nursery in 1944 in anticipation of their parents being deported to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered. Their aunt, Marguerite Fischel, survived the war and went to find the boys so she could take them to live with her. However, the nun who had custody of the boys, Antoinette Brun, adamantly refused to give them up, reportedly saying that “The Jews are not grateful”
What followed was a years long custody battle where despite being repeatedly ordered by courts all over Europe to return the boys, Brun took them to many different countries and hid them, with the support and help of other nuns and priests. It was suspected at the time, and later confirmed by documents released in 2020, that Pope Pius XII had supported the effort to keep the boys away from their surviving family and have them be raised Catholic.
Thankfully, after negotiations between a sympathetic cardinal in France and the chief Rabbi of Paris, the boys were finally recovered and reunited with their aunt.
Documents reveal the private discussions behind both Pope Pius XII’s silence about the Nazi deportation of Rome’s Jews in 1943 and the Vatic
I wish I could say that the phenomenon of the Catholic Church kidnapping children and keeping them away from their families for the purposes of forcefully raising them Catholic is unique to Jews, but it’s not. From the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, the Church ran hundreds of residential schools in the US and Canada where indigenous children were kidnapped from their homes and forced into these cruel and inhumane “schools”. The children were forbidden from speaking their own languages or practicing their own cultures and religions, their hair was cut, and they were subject to emotional, verbal, spiritual, physical, and sexual abuse. Many of the children died due to malnutrition or medical neglect, their bodies buried like dogs beside the schools. The Catholic Church was not the only Church to participate in this, but they’ve been the most reluctant to fully acknowledge and apologize for it. It was only in 2022 that Pope Francis apologized on behalf of the Catholic Church for their part, but some people found the apology inadequate.
Idk what my point is here, just that there’s such a clean link between evangelizing, cultural/religious imperialism, and how damaging and horrifying a religion can be when it is thoroughly convinced of its own superiority. And that unless an institution is forced to change, it probably won’t change on its own.
A Book of Creatures by @a-book-of-creatures doesn't update these days but is another thing along these lines, really huge, fully illustrated all by the author and cites all sources
gracieabrams
2087
romaincrisis
origamiaround
izzy806
tangentwithtanner
jimmyeatworldofficial
germansingergirl
