13 replies to this topic

[the L]

In year 525 BC near todays Port Said ,Persians under Cambyses II defeated Egyptians. http://en.wikipedia....elusium_(525_BC)
Later Herodotus visited war site at 5 century BC. Herodotus  noticed that when you drop stone on the skull of Persian soldier it would made big hole. And that if you drop stone on the skull of Egyptian soldier it wouldnt made holes, or very small. On some cases that skull would not broke even if you hit it with stone several time. Herodotus explaination was that Egyptians shaved their head from young days and that Persians put only scarfs on their head.
Whats your explanation? Was Herodotus right?

Please avoid those alien hypothesis.

[the L]

http://www.livius.or...tus/hist17.html

[kmt_sesh]

When it comes to Book II of The Histories, Herodotus usually isn't right.

Consider a couple of things. This is a well known account of Herodotus, but:

• What are the chances all those bodies were just lying around for around 75 years, by the time Herodotus made it to Egypt? None of them were buried? That's considerably unrealistic, especially considering the Egyptians' ultra-reverant requirements for burial.
  
  
• How would Herodotus, or anyone else touring the site, know which was an Egyptian skull and which was an Persian skull?

As is usual in such cases, actual historians have tried to make sense of this account. The most likely and reasonable explanation is, if Herodotus was in fact led to the site with a lot of skeletal remains, it was probably just a badly plundered cemetery. The cemetery may have had many centuries of burials. The longer bone is subjected to the elements, the more brittle it becomes. This means a very old skull sitting on the surface might be a lot more brittle than a nearby skull that was not nearly as old. Shattering the old, brittle skull with a stone would be easy to do.

[the L]

kmt_sesh, on 18 March 2012 - 04:06 AM, said:

[*]What are the chances all those bodies were just lying around for around 75 years, by the time Herodotus made it to Egypt? None of them were buried? That's considerably unrealistic, especially considering the Egyptians' ultra-reverant requirements for burial.

[*]How would Herodotus, or anyone else touring the site, know which was an Egyptian skull and which was an Persian skull?

As I understand battle occured in desert. No one mention people burried there.  Herodotus probably knew what was Egyptian or Persian soldier by armor, bracelet, weapon, rings, amulets, ...artifacts. The chances all those bodies lying around for 75 years are same as bodies found in cemetery 117 lying there for 14.000 years. Also I never heared that they found army of mummies.

[The_Spartan]

Herodotus, would have mostly written up material, based on tales he has heard.
of course, he has traveled a lot. But the extent of his travels as detailed in Histories is vague.

Foe example, Herodotus would be at an inn, talking with other travelers, swapping tales and he hears about tales, rumors, which he passes off in his book as first hand observations, without even bothering to check the veracity of the tales.

[the L]

The_Spartan, on 18 March 2012 - 09:00 AM, said:

Foe example, Herodotus would be at an inn, talking with other travelers, swapping tales and he hears about tales, rumors, which he passes off in his book as first hand observations, without even bothering to check the veracity of the tales.

How can be you so sure?

[The_Spartan]

Melo, on 18 March 2012 - 05:31 PM, said:

How can be you so sure?

I would ask you the opposite question - How can you be sure of what Herodotus had written is the whole truth ?

[DieChecker]

Melo, on 17 March 2012 - 11:13 PM, said:

.....Herodotus explaination was that Egyptians shaved their head from young days and that Persians put only scarfs on their head.
Whats your explanation? Was Herodotus right?

Assuming that the situation and experiment are true... Then I'd guess that the skulls are different due to environmental factors, as all humans are genetically too similar to show such a change between skulls of different peoples.

I'd suggest that the Persions perhaps had less calcium in their diets then the Egyptians did. I'd hazard to guess that a modern man's skull would hold up much like is described with the Egyptians. So, I'm going to also guess that the Persian soldiers when they were children were malnurished.

I'm not sure if there is a known history of child labor in ancient Persia and Egypt, but it could also be that the Egytpians lived a harder life as a child and thus more exercise and thus stronger bones in general.

I very much doubt that shaving your head, or putting on a cloth/scarf have AnyThing to do with skull hardness.

kmt_sesh, on 18 March 2012 - 04:06 AM, said:

• What are the chances all those bodies were just lying around for around 75 years, by the time Herodotus made it to Egypt? None of them were buried? That's considerably unrealistic, especially considering the Egyptians' ultra-reverant requirements for burial.
  
  
• How would Herodotus, or anyone else touring the site, know which was an Egyptian skull and which was an Persian skull?

Those both popped into my head also. Surely the site had been looted, even if the soldiers were buried. The only way I can think of would be if there were two distict mass graves, one for Egyptians and one for Persians, and thus any skull on site A would be Egpytian and a skull from site B would be Persian. The sites would need to be marked with some kind of written markers to be able to know one was Persian and one Egyptian.

[the L]

The_Spartan, on 18 March 2012 - 05:55 PM, said:

I would ask you the opposite question - How can you be sure of what Herodotus had written is the whole truth ?

Truth is Im not. Thats why I started this thread in the first place. Now is your turn.

[The_Spartan]

Most scholars believe that a large  percentage of the Histories is based on Hear-say rather than Herodotus visiting the the location and observing first hand.
of course Herodotus traveled a lot, but not to that extent as he has depicted in the Histories.

[Leonardo]

Melo, on 17 March 2012 - 11:13 PM, said:

In year 525 BC near todays Port Said ,Persians under Cambyses II defeated Egyptians. http://en.wikipedia....elusium_(525_BC)
Later Herodotus visited war site at 5 century BC. Herodotus  noticed that when you drop stone on the skull of Persian soldier it would made big hole. And that if you drop stone on the skull of Egyptian soldier it wouldnt made holes, or very small. On some cases that skull would not broke even if you hit it with stone several time. Herodotus explaination was that Egyptians shaved their head from young days and that Persians put only scarfs on their head.
Whats your explanation? Was Herodotus right?

Please avoid those alien hypothesis.

Herodotus' claim would be easy to test, as there are descendants of those Persians living today in modern-day Iran, and descendants of those Egyptians in modern-day Egypt. Testing should indicate a weaker skull than in the Persians (as there would be little to no evolutionary change over such a small number of generations, plus the environmental driver for such change does not appear to exist) but, to my knowledge, there is no evidence of any such variation.

This, and many other as-dubious claims Herodotus made, are reasons why his Histories are largely viewed as second-hand (at best) anecdote rather than valid first-hand witness accounts.

Edited by Leonardo, 19 March 2012 - 08:49 AM.

[kmt_sesh]

Melo, on 18 March 2012 - 08:39 AM, said:

As I understand battle occured in desert. No one mention people burried there.  Herodotus probably knew what was Egyptian or Persian soldier by armor, bracelet, weapon, rings, amulets, ...artifacts. The chances all those bodies lying around for 75 years are same as bodies found in cemetery 117 lying there for 14.000 years. Also I never heared that they found army of mummies.

Egyptian cemeteries were typically situated in the desert. Look at modern photos of ancient deserts that have recently been looted: there are bones lying all over the surface of the ground. This has been happening in Egypt recently again, especially at the site of el Hibeh. Photographs show skulls and other disarticulated skeletons scattered all over the place. Grave robbers don't care about the bodies but about the grave goods which accompanied the bodies.

If Herodotus even actually visited the site of the battle, which can be questioned in and of itself, this is most likely what he was seeing: a disturbed and looted cemetery. In point of fact very few people could've afforded mummification to begin with, so the mortal remains of nearly all ancient Egyptians have come down to us as skeletons. Or parts thereof.

I don't believe Herodotus makes mention of weapons or armor or other telltale signs, and the whole point of his story is how one could supposedly tell the difference between the skulls simply by how dense they were. Think about it in scientific terms and take advantage of fundamentals of which Herodotus and others of his day could not have been aware: whether a desert dweller shaves his hair or not will have no effect on the density of his skull bones. The idea is kind of absurd on the face of it. Moreover, plenty of Egyptians did not shave their hair. The idea that everyone ran around bald is a cultural misnomer stretching all the way back to the time of the Greeks, who tended to misrepresent foreign cultures in all manner of ways.

That Herodotus did not visit all of the sites about which he writes should hardly come as surprising. It's almost guaranteed that he did not. Read his accounts of the Fayoum region of Egypt and its features and monuments: his accounts of them are nearly all bungled. In many cases it's almost a certainty that he was only gathering second-hand tales and descriptions for inclusion in his accounts, even if he doesn't admit as much.

[the L]

Kmt did you seen post 2 link?

[kmt_sesh]

Melo, on 19 March 2012 - 09:04 PM, said:

Kmt did you seen post 2 link?

Yes, I did see it, and i fact found it convenient for the quote from Book II. Saved me from having to dig out my copy of Herodotus to look it up.

I also noted where the author of the web page believes Herodotus "is not repeating a story he has not checked." It would be interesting to know how the author of the web page is so certain of this, unless he has a time machine. If so, I would like to borrow it. That would be b****in'.

However, the case remains the same. On the merits of science, if not just plain logic, what Herodotus is reporting in this account is not real.