I’ve now received 13 messages from people asking for more amusing historical facts. Therefore, I will list 13 facts and then I’m done with this game:
1. The Yucatan Penninsula was so named because a Spanish explorer asked an indigenous Mayan what the area was called and the Mayan said something that sounded to the Spaniard like “yucatan”. It actually meant “I don’t understand you.”
2. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the first Roman dictator for life, had a male lover, a famous actor named Metrobius. The two of them seem to have first met when Sulla was a young man and their relationship continued for at least 30 years. When Sulla retired (from his life-long appointment, but that’s another story) Metrobius seems to have stayed with him until his death.
3. The Chinese characters and Japanese kanji writing system used to be much more similar than they are now, but after WWII, both systems were independently changed, so that many signs that once had the same meaning no longer have anything to do with each other.
4. Darius I, a Persian king, carved a huge monument on the side of a mountain. The text is basically a massive attempt to justify his seizure of the throne, which he seems to have done by killing one, or maybe two successive kings. He claims on the monument that the king he killed was actually a magician in disguise.
5. A Roman legion captured by the Parthians eventually ended up in China. The Chinese hired them as mercenaries and they founded a garrison town which the Chinese called Li-Jien.
6. The Mongols practiced religious toleration, on the basis that any religion could be right, so it was better to let all the different priests pray for the health of the Khan.
7. There was the Jewish rabbi in the early second century named Elisha ben Abuyah who was so troubled by the problem of suffering in the world that he became an atheist, went to Syria, wrote Greco-Roman philosophy, and was still considered such a great Jewish scholar that rabbinical students would sneak off to Syria to study with him.
8. The Phaistos disc exists. I can’t explain what it is in a few sentences, but it’s so weird and wonderful, so please look it up.
9. Human physical forms over the last 50,000 years have undergone an evolutionary process called pedomorphism, which is usually associated with domesticated animals. Since pedomorphic evolution indicates that an animal has become tame, and since there’s a good argument that humans have become progressively less violent over time, humans seem to have tamed ourselves.
10. Hawaiian Creole has words and grammar taken from English, Cantonese, Hawaiian, Portuguese, Korean, various Filipino indigenous languages, other Polynesian languages, and even another creole, Tok Pisin. It developed because children from various communities of workers in Hawaii all started talking to each other in a mix of their native languages.
11. During the Protestant Reformation, a bunch of Anabaptist radicals took over the city of Munster and ruled it for a few years. The story of this incident involves a former actor, a bunch of nuns, a prophesying smith, polygamy, and a couple of cannons named “The Devil” and “His Mother”.
12. Christian missionaries first arrived in Japan in 1549. About 70 years later, Japan was closed to foreigners and all Japanese Christians were forced to publicly renounce their faith. When Japan was opened again 200 years later, Christians visiting the country found Christian communities still practicing in secret.
13. There’s a hilarious Mayan comic strip painted on a vase, in which a rabbit steals the clothes of a merchant god. The merchant god goes to the chief of the gods to complain. The chief god insists that he doesn’t know where the rabbit is, while the rabbit leans out from behind the throne, waving one paw in the air.
I just spent half an hour checking my sources for this post, so I hope y'all are happy. Now stop sending me “lol here’s anon hate tell me a fact lol uwu” messages cause it’s getting tedious. Just kidding, ancient history is my special interest and I had fun sharing this with you, but it’s really not what this blog is for.
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