I am not a fan of anything that Simon does. I remember watching a video that he said he had no idea who the Knights Templar were, and he has talk about them a number of times. A lot of the "facts" come from articles from places like the Washington post and so on.
Simon literally calls himself stupid every second video lol. Also I feel bad for the people who can't enjoy his content for what it is. He is far more accurate then most similar channels and unlike most of those channels he doesnt present himself as a font of knowledge. Also stumbling upon him is what ultimately lead me to Metatron.
@@corylove6636 so you dislike a media person because he is not expert on everything? Of course he cant know all he talks about, his scope of topics is radiculously rich, but he is fairly accurate, good narator and is presenting information in a digestable way. If you want to hear from experts on topics get into a lecture and study the topic.
@@emilspasov4356 I dislike top 10 channels because most of the channels put out a video every day with incorrect data and a lot of people believe everything on there is true. There needs to be a fact checker aspect for this. I stopped watching Simon as soon as I noticed the "facts" are generally pulled from a small article in new outlets like the Washington Post.
In fact, Majorian's fleet destruction by the Vandals was the death blow of the Western Roman Empire. Losing such an expensive fleet itself is a death blow, but it made the WRE practically dependent on its wealthier ERE for any significant operations.
@@danvasii9884 Also even with my very limited knowledge of plants and stuff it's going to wash away with the rain. An area only stays salty if there's natural salt in the area and even then you can mediate the soil and ancient people had lots of plant skills.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the many writers shackled in Simon's basement, providing him with his enormous supply of scripts, as well as the editors chained in his attic, and the team of highly skilled barbers corralled in his garage. May they live long, and continue their good work.
As a french person, i'm officially asking Italy for reparations for the roman conquest of Gaul. More seriously, Rome wasn't close to be the most horrific and brutal people in their days, and the other didn't have lead pipes. (And since people are used to moronic takes on internet, the reparation part is a meme, a joke)
For the talk of Roman brutality, Rome was rather generous toward those who simply threw the towel in early. Those who accepted being part of Rome had the opportunity to become citizens, and could partake in the empire's economy and politics. They were not occupied so much as assimilated in, and did end up having a say in the direction of the nation. By ancient standards this is rather progressive for a conquering country to offer.
I mean, sort of. It depended on a lot of factors, including just who the personality in charge was. Not a lot of help for the Raetians, a lot of the Galls, etc. There isn’t a lot of argument that what Caesar did wasn’t genocide unless you take the most absolutely narrow definition of that word. That said, taken on balance, while Rome was probably a more brutal than average pre-modern civilization, it’s not anywhere near the top groups.
Well there's some religions will not kill you if you deny your own and join them. All throughout history if you turned your back and joined the enemy... You might be free but you're still a coward. All throughout history if you did not deny who you were or where you for from you could die. So the Romans treating people good that just surrendered and gave in did not make the Romans good.
Same with the Mongols. If you acknowledged that you were their vassal they'd leave you well alone as long as you paid tribute, if you didn't however... boy oh boy.
“Salting the Earth” - This myth worked on me and cost me a lot of money and time. I had a giant play set on my property which stood on an enormous playfield covered in wood chips, landscape fabric, etc. All of this was done at a cost over $10k. Fast forward a few years and weeds are everywhere. Fast forward a couple of years and I get tired of trying to keep up after this giant plot of land two or three times a season. So, being a learned sort I remember my history and think to myself, “Fuck it. Nuclear option - I’m going to Salt the Earth.” Bought a shit load of rock salt, tilled up the borders around our playset, dumped in dozens of bags of salt, tilled it together and waited for my beautiful scorched Earth genocide to commence. It. Did. NOTHING. Whole area was over grown in weeks. So, not only did it NOT happen, not only is it a MYTH, even if it did, IT DOESN’T EVEN WORK.
It heavily depends on your soil to be fair. Coming from someone who that spends most of their time fightin extremely heavy clay soil, salt is a death sentence to any plants in my yard. It can be remedied, but it’s a real pain in the ass that involves a lot of soil amendments, tiling, and aerating to fix. If you have loamy or Sandy soil, just water it and you’re good. But if you’ve got heavy clay soil, dumping salt on your yard works as advertised. It’ll wear off eventually, but I can be sure I won’t be able to get much aside from stubborn weeds to grow there for the rest of the season.
If something as simple as salt killed plants so effectively, we would never have invented weed killers, because you could just sprinkle a little table salt on them instead lol A little bit of logic goes a long way!
I feel vindicated... I am italian, I am almost 50... around 37 years ago I asked my history teacher if the "salting of the hearth" was a littlebit of a rethorical figure... the reprimand I got out of it still bugs me because when I got to the end of school exam my grade was reduced... I asked my teacher if it was the rethorical figure because, as you said, salt was a currency and the roman had at least a hundred more efficient way to cancel once and forever Carthage... GO ME! (thanks, amazing video as always!)
I had something similar happen to me at the hands of a particularly vindictive college professor; she made a small factual error (which was more of a minor detail than anything else in the grand scheme of things), and I made the mistake of opening my mouth. In response, she deliberately tried to fail me out of the class; to my eternal amusement, she was unsuccessful - because a huge chunk of our grades for that class was made up of multiple-choice Scantron tests that I aced. Should I have said anything about her error or just kept my mouth shut? To this day, I'm on the fence about it. It wasn't exactly a hill that I wanted to die on, metaphorically speaking, but it all came out well for me in the end, I suppose.
if people were as witty back then as they are today, I could see how the term _'salting the Earth (with Carthaginians' tears)'_ may have gotten coined, lmao \o/
Simon responds positively because unlike most youtubers... He rarely wrote his own script or did his own research. He has virtually nothing to be defensive about in a personal sense. Not to downplay how positive the attitude is but it's somewhat easier for him.
@101jir may not say bomber in manufactor's specs but it was surely used as one. What Is your point? Cause your the inaccurate one in this case my dude, you should try doing some fact checking once in awhile before you comment. Turns out when they flew those planes into pearl Harbour it wasn't a bombing, America should of never entered the war......
@@Ashley-wi4ng "Surely it was used as one." Okay, then name one fighter that cannot be called a bomber. If any plane were ever to be called a fighter, it's the A6M. Literally any fighter "can be used" as a bomber. That doesn't make it correct to call it one. Also, the A6M wasn't the one doing the bombing, it was the D3A. A6Ms were strafing fighters and/or killing those that made it airborne. So no, I'm not inaccurate, you need to check your facts.
@Metatron Hi, a neurologist here. First thank you sir for your good work, keep it up! Second, I'd like to join the debate about lead poisoning as possible factor in declining of Roman empire. It's not as big of a stretch as you seem to think. First of all, the symptoms you describe are referring to acute lead poisoning, for example in a factory worker who is exposed to really high doses in short period of time. And yes, that level of exposure was rather unlikely for general population of Rome. But what's interesting in this conversation is the effect of constant exposure to small doses of lead with children - there's a clear correlation to lower iq, shorter attention span, asocial and dyssocial behaviour, concentration and memory issues and aggression. You asked in your video, where are all the sociopaths today since we're still using lead today. There is a study (if you're willing to continue this discussion, I'll find it for you) that shows a correlation between the time lead based paint and gasoline were used and the spike in violent crime in US, and decline in it after both were banned. The lines are shifted around 15 years- a generation of children exposed to lead. You made a point that lead piping wasn't common in all parts of the empire, I agree with that. But we should remember that the ruling class was italocentric. It was rare for even rulers of distant provinces to be natives, they USUALLY came from Rome or other lead-piped italian cities. Also, high lead concentration in water doesn't mean that everyone becomes a violent sociopath all at once, it means more people than usually are. The changes in society are slow, because they are generational, or even multigenerational. In conclusion, I don't think we should dismiss lead poisoning as just another hypothesis but take it quite seriously, since modern science gives us strong evidence about consequences of lead poisoning in children. Again, thank you for your time and keep up the good work.
Lead is extremely stable and dense heavy metal. It has no affinity to dissolve in water. Leaded water is not a thing. Lead has also no biological functions whatsoever. All the lead in circulation was basically put there by us. Evidence of the Romans wide use of lead can be found in glacial deposits. Essentially all the adults susceptible to acute lead poisoning were the ones mining and refining the ore and manufacturing subsequent lead products. Offering any amount of lead-sweetened wine or any other lead-acetate laden products to indulge in for nobility, their children nor anyone else, would be considered a criminal offense with our current knowledge. When Standard Oil started producing Tetraethyl-Lead as antiknock agent for global use to enhance the effectiveness of our combustion engines, NIH (or whatever the agency was called at the time) outright lied and sent letters to every european country, lying how they have researched the compound and found it perfectly safe for humans. Nobody mentioned or cared about the families, who got murdered by employees, whose minds went mush from contact with the stuff. "Ethyl" was the marketing name. "Butterfly-House" they nicknamed the production facility. Deploying tetraethyl-lead upon EVERYONE of us, regardless did we have a car or not, resulted in this global lead poisoning epidemic, which effects can be seen in the statistics you brought up. Evil, EVIL stuff. We were ALL sacrificed on the altar of PROFIT and "progress". That's Global Capitalism in a nutshell.
Thank you. I was going to say something similar. One thing that strikes me, just off the top of my head, is the low birth rate among the Roman elite, with many families having just one or two children and many didn't make it to adulthood (Agricola had one child, did the Emperor Claudius have any children? Nero? Caligula? Wasn't Augustus concerned about this & told the Equites to go out & get married & have children?) which could have been simply a high infant death rate, something we didn't get on top of until the past 100 years or so, but as low level long term lead ingestion will lead to male and female infertility, I think it's worth considering.
Another interesting point regarding lead poisoning in Rome, meaning specifically the City of Rome, even dough lead pipes were widely used in domestic plumbing the water was really rich in minerals and created thick deposits almost everywhere in went, it is well documented the constant efforts made to keep aqueducts clean and the periodic closures to do so. So a lining of minerals coated most if not all pipes, also water was not stored in lead vessels, usually those were just ceramics or terracotta.
Growing up the pipes weren't discussed as a significant source of lead. Just that some of their cooking/serving vessels may have contained lead. Which in certain circumstances may cause exposure if the food/drink was heated or acidic.
The Romans sprinkled their food and drinks with lead-acetate as a sweetener. Their bones contain 100x as much lead as that of iron-age people. The Romans definitely were poisoning themselves with lead. The extent to which this contributed to their demise is open to debate, but it must have had an effect on their society.
Salting the ground was taught in elementary school. Then we actually tried salting a place to prevent weeds. Few months and its weedy. Then i thought about this salt the fields story. So they mined tons of salt just to spread it on fields to temporarily prevent plantlife. Taking lot of manpower and time and salt. It seemed stupid. And they teach it as fact... saying its annoying is an understatement
I agree with you, can you imagine the amount of salt needed to ruin the soil around carthage, for years to come. Not forgetting the man power needed for such a task, it would have been a huge waste of time and resources.
You can use salt against weed, but you also need vingar. Mix them and you get a light solution of acidic and hydrochloric acid. But doesnt work as good as modern stuff :)
Maybe the soil in Carthage wasn't really that good and the salt just exacerbated the issue. I meanCarthage was in the desert and desert aren't really known for their lush brown soil
@@alexanerose4820 Back then it was far different from what we see today. You have to remember that it's 2000 years of time difference and weather readjustment and water rearrangement.
In the German areas controlled by the Romans, the lead pipes were often so heavily calcified by the calcareous water that lead could not react with water. I don't know if the Romans used a strong calcareous spring on purpose, but in my opinion it was a brilliant protection for the time.
Something similar happens with aluminium except it's on the pipe side of things. When it oxidizes, aluminium oxide remains on the outer layer of the pipe, rather than flaking off, like iron oxide does, leaving a protective layer between the pipe and the water.
You can pretty much think of any random ass topic on earth and find Simon Whistles doing a mini documentary about it. But FYI, he doesn’t create all the content. He is essentially a hired host/personality for many different channels. He is good at presenting and any argument made in a refined English accent is instantly more compelling to an American audience. The beard definitely helps his credibility too.
He’s the owner and narrator of his channels. He’s very clear and gives lots of credit to his writers and editors, often giving them call outs in his videos on his longer form channels like Brain Blaze and Decoding the Unknown. It’s why I love his channels so much, he’s a proper business man with a great personality and talent who treats his employees well.
It doesn't matter how good of an employer he is. The fact is as a creator he's leaning towards sensationalism more than facts therefore he's not reliable. Every video he makes about old civs is about them being too brutal and savage he doesn't understand the context a lot of times behind this brutality. He'd make a vid about Spartans and said they're too brutal because they treated their slaves bad but will also disregard the number of slaves was too big in sparta and often their revolutions could endanger the very existence of Sparta. He'll do things like that all the time. He doesn't care about facts.
@@GothPaokihe is far from that, his channels are more focused into passing unbiased information researched by his writers, most of them with specialization in the areas of the specific channel. They can get things wrong, but you clearly don't know his intentions and his writers.
@@rafaelbrisolara7599 I don't know his writers but i see the end result and it's far from factual. Saying he's unbiased doesn't mean he's right. And even saying he's unbiased is highly debatable. His approach to old civs is in itself wrong. Just the last couple of months he's had half a dozen videos about how brutal old civs were and in none of those videos he actually takes into account the context of these civs and their practices.
People have this misconception that when Carthage was destroyed, the Phoenician people were all killed in a genocide as well. Not at all. Yes, the capitol was destroyed, but the Punic people and civilization were simply absorbed into the Roman Empire. The Punic language continued to be spoken for many centuries afterward.
That doesn't change the fact that Carthago's destruction, with all its people, was a major fellony. They were Rome's ally at the moment, thay accomplished all the payments to Rome and even they gave grain to Rome for free. They asked for a less than decorous surrender and tried to raise a decent defense (which they didn't achieve) only when saw it was all loss.
I've spent the last few weeks traveling to many ancient cities like Troy, Pergamon, Ephesus, Alexandria Troas, Parion, Assus, and Apollo Smintheion. I have lots of photos of the Roman pipework in houses, gymnasiums, bath houses, etc. They are all clay, and almost identical to modern clay pipes. Yes, the Romans used lead in their plumbing, but only in specific aspects of the plumbing system. The majority of pipework in these building was clay.
Also due to the way of construction back then the water was in constant flow, led is more of an issue when the water faucet is turned of and you later use standing water instead of actual fresh water. Regardless of the type of pipes someone uses, if the water was turned off for some time, it's always good NOT using the water coming from the tab at first for drinking water.
@@wolfgangkranek376I always run the tap a moment before using the water. I've never liked the thought of using water that's been sitting still in the pipes.
@@jimmcdougle3404 No, sorry, I don't, but I did take 1000s of photos. I'm a modeler/sculptor too, so a lot of it was for reference, especially the museum photos.
Thank you for contextualizing the Third Punic War. It's essential to understanding Rome's actions in the face of an existential threat. In addition, spreading the myth they sacrificed children is just as apocryphal as the salting of Punic soil. And considering the fact that Polybius was with then General/Consul Scipio Aemilianus during the fall of Carthage, you'd think he would've mentioned the salting of the earth. Solid work, boss 👍👍
Yeah I always read the third punic war conclusion as Rome basically saying "fuck these guys, they can't stop causing us problems so we're just gonna get rid of them."
I still believe the destruction of Carthage was completely unjustified . Romans were completely afraid and scared of Carthage, they still remembered Hannibal and how close he was of destroying Rome to the ground but let's be real after that Carthage was incredibly weak and would never be a threat to Rome ever again. There would never be another Hannibal just like there was never another Napoleon , military super genius are very uncommon , one every 1000 years
@@Martel24k Still, it was a matter of prudence to annihilate Carthage. Therefore, a justified act (not in the moral sense, for such a thing means absolutely nothing).
@@LaB567 Are you talking about the Romans or the Carthaginians? Cause I have seen some recent documentaries about it possibly being a practice the people of Carthage did themselves in both good times and bad. There's little proof of this actually happening anywhere, but it might have been like in the films and books when the civilians will want to kill themselves to avoid capture or anything the enemy might want to do to them .
not to justify atrocities or anything, however, a lot of the brutality that the Romans committed was just par for the course during that time period. Other societies were brutal too....the Romans sometimes systematized things a bit more, but otherwise I don't think they were special on the brutality front....people just don't have the context...
This was a battle for supremacy not survival though the Romans were indeed not that brutal all things considered. Yet your example is bad and only works on limited scale. Like had you said they were brutal to deal with their neighbours that's acceptable but pushing it all the way to Carthage kinda loses validity because of the geographic scope.
There's more truth to this post than many realize. We know so much about Roman brutality because they recorded it. The was plenty of brutality outside of the Romans, but we don't have near the amount of records to learn of it.
@@VTdarkangel not to mention the special focus that the Roman Empire gets in Western history...compared to other Empires, even without considering the sources of info and whatnot....
After the Parthians defeated the Roman army they severed Krassus’s head and filled it with molten gold and after that they proceeded to parade it around the villages and towns for everyone to see. Such brutality was common for that period which is in part why generals and kings that were defeated preferred to poison themselves than be caught alive.
One cannot win a war without being brutal, and at a time where the weapons and combat style were of that type it would make it look even more brutal, but is a sword or spear really more brutal than a stinger missile or artillery. This idea was looked at in detail in Apocalypses Now. If you don't out force the enemy you will lose. Ergo any winner throughout history was brutal. At a time when slavery was the norm and wars and border issues regular events, where citizens watched people fight in arenas, how else can someone today judge them. This is a very dangerous thing to do because if you don't take into context the way of life at the time you will never understand it.
when two people fight with switchblades, they either both die, or one manages to survive pretty wounded, because everyone thinks they are better than the opponent, and if you get injured in melee you will be put down as ranged weapons kept increasing in lethality people stopped being so confident in their abilities since you can die from something you cannot react to, and this made wars more tactical and with a high amount of stalemates so if you see two melee armies fighting back in the days, they will all die
@@allenanderson4911 I worked in corrections and it was a combination of control and force. There was a joke that said to take down an inmate you can use all the force he uses + 10%, but that is wrong you need as much force to overcome his and to take him down. That being said in the last two thirds of my career my talk down was over 90%. It beats rolling around on the floor and getting writers cramp. When I ordered the use of force I always told them to go in at 100% if you go in with less you lose.
@ZoomerStasiNot to mention that the Sack of Troy was (according to Herodotus) the catalyst of the animosity between the Greeks and Persians, leading to yet more wars that lasted several generations.
So where did Mozart got his talent from if he wasn't born with it? His father started to cultivate Mozarts skills AFTER his father realised how much talent Mozart was born with.@@Leftyotism
THANK YOU.....I have fought the "There's no Roman account or proof for the salting of Carthage for years!." And I always get push back with things like, "But this scholar said this, and this scholar said that." And I always answer, "But which Roman said it, or even suggested that it happened!" Why would they salt the earth, when one of the primary reasons they wanted Carthage was for the ability to use the lands for farming. Think about it people.
That and in that time period salt was extremely valuable even being used as currency in some regions. Next will be told that they plowed gold into the fields to make them to chunky to farm...LOL
@@SpartanLeonidas1821 Oh absolutely and that was my point earlier. I have gotten into debate after debate with both experts and amateurs with this topic. They always say "We know this happened for certain because ABC said this or that in their work." And I always have to ask the question, "Where did ABC get their information? Because there are no Roman sources that say this or even hint they did this. Not to mention, we know what the Romans did with the region after they won...if they made the land infertile with salt then how did they magically start using the farmland as one of their main agricultural centers right after? How did they sustain their later colonies there?" It just doesn't make any sense. Now it's obvious what happened, someone got poetic and used the reference to highlight the total domination of the Carthage, that's fine. But somewhere along the line, the world started to believe it really happened. And now, if you say it didn't happen, the world reacts like you're the crazy one.
I must've watched that video some months ago and someone pointed out something that sat true with me. The proof of Roman's bloodlust is how as a society the meticulously took to recording their culture through literature & art which is different from some of the communities that were it's contemporaries or even came after them. The person under Simon's video went ahead to mention that other communities were just as brutal as Rome (though it's scale eclipsed them because of the empire's size) but could get a pass either because of the fewer number of reliable records or lack of scrutiny and attention paid to them like Rome. They also went ahead to mention that we should also marvel at the ideal of relative "peace" in the current era coz throughout history spanning different regions and eras, spilling blood was the pattern; survival for the fittest style. Showing fear/hesitation=vanquished/destruction/domination, kill or be killed...survival=being ingeniously bad.
People will seriously argue that Phoenician (or Amerindian) society didn't engage in infanticide because it's Jews and Christians accusing them. This is also the one case where they will downplay Roman violence too
Amerindian or african (not to take away from central asians, but the more eastern asians too) accounts would make for a very effective horror and "evil history!1!1" reading. Although we still know what they did despite not being as extremely detailed as the accounts in Europe and in the Far East with the chinese and the japanese.
@@dusk6159 Even things like Indian women burning themselves on pyres or mass ritual killings in Africa happened incredibly recently. And while Britain gets blamed for slavery due to the anti-white cultural regime, it was the nations they ruled over who were most resistant to its ending.
@@TheThreatenedSwan Not to mention the already incredibly huge and overwhelming thing that is humans chastes and India. Older India all the way to the very India in the current world today.
If someone wants to know something about brutality in warfare, I recommend Chinese classics Records of the Grand Historian, also known by its Chinese name Shiji, which is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. There were often mentioned massacres of whole armies AFTER battle, numbering tens of thousands of surrenders by victor force.
I've been in love with Romans since birth in Algeria we have a lot of roman cities names and ruins everywhere in the country I visited some and now planing to learn every single romance language I already speak French and Spanish still a lot to add and one day Latin why not Salvite Saludos ❤
The thing about the lead poisoning... in toxicology we had an example of Romans drinking mostly sweetened wine, coming from lead acetate forming in leaded vessels, which were used to make some kind of syrup. Also the lead acetate was sweet as well... So if there was lead poisoning, it was mostly the upper class (although I'd argue you'd get cheap wine there as well). All in all it's an oversimplification to say the Romans were becoming mad bc of lead poisoning.
I was expecting you to mention sapa, the lead acetate sweetener which was in common use back then. Claiming lead piping was a cause, is somewhat silly, especially because the bulk of the piping was not lead. But direct ingestion of lead acetate is really different.
I'm 43, growing up it was common knowledge not to drink water from the bathroom in older houses because the lead pipes in the bathrooms often were not changed out to save costs. We were also told not to lick the paint or eat paint chips haha
Where I'm from it's also a way to call someone stupid either openly ("How much paint chip flavored ice cream do you eat to get this way?"), or being "subtle" ("Lot of lead paint in the house you grew up in, was there?")
I mean, the Romans were definitely brutal, but I don't know about _more_ brutal than others. I think there's an odd trend these days of 'bias towards the winners' of history, where people like to attack the brutality and evil of any civilization that had great success. There's a similar thing where people complain about the brutality of the vikings, but again, they weren't any more brutal (or less) than the others at the time. They were just more likely to show up at your door.
I think it’s because there’s a societal struggle to think of people as neither good nor bad but usually somewhere in between. It reminds me of how in high school, a lot of American kids realize their country ISN’T the best in the world, but then instead of thinking “hmmm, wow, guess we’re not perfect and that we have issues and strengths like any nation or people” it’s “America sucks, America is exceptionally terrible and horrible and greedy and bad.” It’s like there’s a cognitive inability to accept flaws in people you admired without going to the opposite extreme. Plus you’ve got the “actually white people and every civilization association relating to them are evil, sociopathic, inhuman colonizers” going on.
Exactly, it's bias against the winners, which really is just another form of white guilt. They feel bad about being on the winning side, and forget that conflict was the law then, and it is unavoidable that whoever came out on top would have to be brutal and have lots of cruel deeds in their history. Hell, that's probably the chicken and the egg answer to why Roman culture was so brutal (even outside of war): they were victorious because they were brutal, they kept being brutal because it kept them victorious. It's basic anthropology; long-lasting cultures are the way they are because it fucking works.
Thanks for this video, I always thought the salt story was a bit much. It just seems like the amount of salt required would be so massive that it would have been an unrealistic undertaking.
i find it strange that a lot of people in societies that consume countless hours of Violent movies, video games, television shows, music and so on, Find the violent aspects of Roman society so hard to comprehend, that they think something like the use of violence as entertainment means the Roman's must have been poisoned or insane to enjoy things like that. I enjoy the content and appreciate the time and effort put into there creation.. Thank you
The main difference is that the violence in video games and films isn't real. There is a difference between watching a movie where actors fake injuries and death, and going to live shows where fellow people are put to slaughter for real. By the way, thinking that these shows were an abomination and the negation of common decency isn't just a biased opinion from our modern age, it was also the opinion of many a contemporary writer.
@OutsiderLabs There were boxing matches in ancient Rome too. The question pertains to actual, lethal violence, as in running a blade through a living person's throat and letting them drown in their blood for everyone to see, which I don't think constitute a well sought after form of entertainment in today's world (save for some southern and middle eastern countries). So try to stay on topic, please.
Simon produces so much content on so many different topics (written and researched by different writers) that he probably already has forgotten this particular one :)
Simon produces so much content that I stopped following him because there is just no way he is doing enough research and I just don't want to go on repeating any errors he make. I prefer listening to less but more thoroughly researched content.
One thing I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt, and which Simon's video is the perfect example of, is that our Modern viewpoint is almost entirely incompatible with the ancient view point. It is wise not to impose our views on the people of the past.
Then you cannot criticize historical atrocities? Because most European powers were antisemitic and imperialist in the past, you would not judge the Nazis?
@@Peter-jo6yu We can know that they happenened and make an active effort to not enable anyone wanting to repeat them. An the nazis are a fringe case because they were bad even for the lower standards of human decency of the early 20th century Europe.
@@Peter-jo6yuyou can judge the actions of anyone but you can’t compare our views to theirs. It’s pointless and creates an inaccurate understanding of the culture in question.
@@Peter-jo6yu Still NO. That's the problem with humans, they are always trying to insert themselves into any possible situation. Every situation has those who benefit and those who don't. It is called the conflict of interest. A lion wants to eat the gazelle and the gazelle doesn't want to be eaten. That's how life works and always will work. There is no such thing as equality and it is impossible to force everyone to be equal in the first place. The Nazis were people like any other. They had their enemies and they had their friends. You may not like what they did and spread that narrative to others but likewise, they liked what they did, believed in it and spread it to others. That's what ideals are, they are ideals. If you say the Aryan people are better than all other races just because, that is a idealized statement. You can't actually disprove it using emotion. You could disprove it using fact by compiling a list of all other races, comparing them in all kinds of areas and then working out which one is most favored by natural selection in theory, but that isn't what was going on. Likewise, saying all races are equal is also an idealized statement that has no factual basis yet people spread it as if it were propaganda simply in the hopes of it not causing racial discrimination. the Aryans are not the ideal race and all races are not equal so why are we pretending that one is an acceptable statement to make and the other one isn't? It's simple. One statement appeases more people than the other one which is why it is accepted and THAT is the issue. Humans don't care about facts, they care about feelings. If a guy told me he was going to eliminate my whole family, the natural response would be to just k*ll him. After all, how can he then k*ll my family if he is already dead? Instead what is the accepted response? To call the cops and say some guy said something and at best get a restraining order and at worst tell me they won't act because he hasn't actually done anything. What will any of that mean to him? Even if I got a restraining order, that doesn't stop him sneaking up to my house and k*lling us all. I could end his very threat in an instant by eliminating him from my life permanently yet am expected not to act because it isn't the "moral way" to act. Me not acting in that moment means I have a higher chance of seeing the consequences unfold. Your whole "moral way is the right way" statement is complete nonsense. Morals accomplish nothing whatsoever. Facts and practicality will always be more important than mere emotions and archaic human idealism. It didn't work then and it never will. We are animals that act in our own benefit because to not do so means we risk our own lives and that is not naturally appropriate unless you are an animal like an ant who are literally bred to be complete fodder because the survival of the colony is all that matters with no f*cks given to individual members. NO human is going to choose to willingly live like that unless they are stupid.
The myth about "salting the earth" by Romans being popular right now is not so surprising, people tend to gravitate to the most outstanding versions since they will give the strongest response from the audience. Similar with the Medusa myth, Medusa is a monster that was established as a monster from the beginning but the 1 scholar described Medusa as "rosy cheeked" and suddenly it sprouted this entire cult that wants to victimise Medusa as tragic figure and what not
Are you sure? I'd wager that has more to do with Ovid's origin story for Medusa being the more popular version than the original Greek version. From our modern perspective, she is undeniably a more tragic figure in Ovid's version.
Dude imagine if Simon reviewed chinese ancient history, where millions dying and other few deciding to eat the dead was just another tuesday on any given dynasty.
Not just the dead, there was was that one city in the Tang dynasty where the general ordered the men to kill and eat the civilian population during a siege (starting with his wife, to show he was serious). 30,000 civilians got eaten. Though the city did fall, its delaying action did prove to be a strategic victory in the end if I remember correctly. EDIT: It was the siege of Suiyang
22:40 Something really similar happened here in Argentina like a hundred and stuff year ago. between 1878 and 1885. In that time most of what is now know as Argentina was infact nomads land. A buch of violent native tribes lived there and dedicated their time to raid argentinan farms and kidnap women and children. And even though historians and scholars try to pass it as an injust massacre and try to convince young children (included myself when I was young) that we are the mean evil ones and the mapuches where all peace and love. The massacre happened because most of the soldiers hated the mapuches because of all the raping and pillaging that had happened. Even when their generals told them that it was just to push them back and increase our borders.
I know, right! Your European ancestors from across the ocean were just peacefully colonizing the land and not letting those native tribes use it for like some silly grazing and food and stuff and then absolutely out of nowhere and for no reason at all they were violently attacked! They were just forced to respond with an already existing army that was never ever used until that point. I just don't understand why some people can't just peacefully get colonized. Well hopefully the Mapuche learned their lesson and now get fucked in silence.
Rome’s engineering was of high quality and importance. If lead poisoning were such a long term generational problem then maybe Rome’s great engineering achievements would not have occurred if the IQ of Romans would have been seriously impacted
Not necessarily, a generation of americans are significantly lead poisoned yet the nation is still the richest on earth. Lead poisoning having a detrimental impact on the Romans doesn't make them so stupid they can't manage great feats of engineering.
lead poisoning is why being a drunkard was so much more stigmatized back then, because it impacted you even more with the lead content as well as any future children. you were essentially dooming your entire bloodline to being peasants or worse
Lead poisoning is a long term generational problem all over the world now, thanks to tetra ethyl lead in gasoline. But we still have many feats of engineering.
Really engaging video, I do like your approach to explaining these things. The whole 'why were they so brutal' and similar does fall into the mythologizing of Rome in general. Since it isn't from the perspective of a historian but a lot of the casual, pop cultural coverage that easily falls into narratives. People look for a reason for x and y things for Rome's 'story'.
@@ronald3836 So a narrative? Right when there's tons of content telling us how great a Queen Cleopatra was and how bad Romans are they release content saying how bad Romans are. I bet you think that's totally just "history" and not a narrative.
Sei un bravo uomo Metatron. Adoro il tuo canale! Continua così; abbiamo bisogno di storie basate su fatti e non su sciocchezze. Rispetto da Toronto Canada.
Oh...what pleasure to read Italiano ❤....grazie...I understand but am lacking any practice to parlo this lingua. P.s. my whole life Cicero was Si-se-ro, more or less (the 'S' being very short, sharp) and here comes Meta and goes 'Ki-ke-ro' .😂...I love, love, looove his crisp pronunciation) My son is partly Siciliano which is only a cherry on the top of my love affair with Italian culture. Ciao da New York(or 'a'?). (Sorry for brutalizing your language 😢)
he is wrong about a lot and when he has addressed it in the past he has pretty much said 'other people write the scripts, not me' as an excuse for being wrong. He doesnt care about being factual. He only cares about views...which is a problem because he presents himself as an informative source which he clearly isnt
Did you watch Simon's video? Every sentence of Simon makes clear it the lead poisoning hypothesis is only a hypothesis. Metatron's criticism is really just criticism of a long series of academic research and history books.
@@Redd_Nebula But he isn't lying here, he is just a frontman because out of the team he is the most charming personality and has a good "radio voice". In their older videos you could sometimes see a different person, that guy is one of the writers who actually makes the videos.
simon has script writers! some of them do good reserch, some just seem to spout rubbish, but he is very no grey shades thinking. i have not even herd of some of those channels and have watched most of them.
@@ronald3836 THere is obviously a biological truth to lead poisoning, but it also has a political element that you might be unaware of. As an ex leftist, I can assure it is being spread to cover up some uncomfortable truths. Investiagte at your leisure.
Any bones examined from the area of Wales during Roman times would almost certainly contain a higher level of lead, as well as other heavy metals as Wales was almost completely under Roman control from 78 AD until 383 AD. The Romans were heavily invested in Wales primarily because it was a huge center for the mining of metal, primarily gold, copper, lead, zinc and silver. Any legionaires assigned to duty in this area would almost certainly show a higher level of heavier metals in thier remains.
Fascinating, I've always liked your academic approach because it gives me the chance to look into it myself and see that you're right and you always are, great work 🙂
Regarding the "lead poisoning" aspect - I'd like to hear your thoughts on the Roman use of sapa. I've seen this raised in other places online, where sapa is described as "lead sugar" created by "boiling unfermented grape juice in order to concentrate the natural sugars." Said boiling took place in lead alloy kettles. Was this wide-spread enough to have poised a significant health issue? Apparently, in Apicius' recipe book roughly a fifth of all recipes called for the use of "lead sugar."
If lead paint walls were banned within the past 100 years, I can assume "lead sugar" would be just as poisoning. Especially considering the culture of drinking they had.
Simon Whistler is the content creator who got me into TH-cam. So I have a bias "soft spot" for him. Yet, nobody is infallible. Metatron, I commend you for correcting the statements made by Simon (or rather, his writer). You played the ball and not the player. Well done Metatron. I truly wish that one day this sort of debate/correction/discourse will become the norm in society. I do feel however that I need to point something out of to those who do not know (in Simon's defence) : Simons is a presenter/narrator. Yes, he has an above average general knowledge and he is intelligent. But he is not a historrian (relating to this video). I don't think that his lack of specified knowledge and education should censor him or anybody like him. He raised fair questions. It takes academics to answer these questions. I truly believe that correspondence such as this reaction video is exactly what we need in this modern age : intellectual ideas vs. academic facts. This is how we boil down to the truth of matters.
I've been watching Simon for about 8 years. He has a team of writers do the research, and he just records videos, lol. That being said, I have noticed over the year inaccurate representations of different topics. Usually, it's either a popular misconception or myth, and I don't think it is intended to misinform. I just found this channel in the last couple of weeks and am in love with that cute pushy! 😍 I'm still getting to know Metatron but so far I'm enjoying the content 😁
I was fine with his ignorance because he was so open about it, and very open about the fact that he was just the reader. Unfortunately, when he allows and goes along with one of his script writers to "respect the pronouns" of a male murderer of teenagers, I really lost my desire listen to Simon, regardless of how well he reads an interesting script.
I was just coming here to say something similar. With the amount of channels that he hosts, there's no way he has the time to research and write every single video he hosts. However, I have never seen him say it's a popular misconception or myth - he hosts as if he's giving the absolute truth. The subjects he talks about are interesting enough, but if I want an authentic take on any given subject he talks about, I'll research it myself
@@horizonzeromom 100% agreed! I take everything on his many channels with a grain of salt. I also know that some writers are more thorough with their research. I've seen the same topic covered on different channels written by different authors and the second author with actually present corrections to the earlier video. It's not often, but it shows that no one is perfect.
Used to love watching Simon, because his content was very objective and the subject matter was really interesting. For the past 3-5 years that has been changing however. Seems that his particular political leanings are affecting his content lately, or his writers political leanings. I haven't been interested in his content in over a year now
Hi love your channel, it's very informative. About lead poisoning considering lead additives to gasoline for years and lead paint that was used in many homes,that impacted health in our world.
Don't forget ammo for guns. Most ammunition to this day still uses primer that has lead in it and obviously the bullet is lead for most.. There seems to be a push for lead-free ammo, but progress has been slow and the lead-free alternatives don't always work for specific guns.
I honestly love the way you use language skill to debate a subject. and what i do love about you is that, im pretty sure, if you got something wrong you have the guts to apologize and rectify. Many can learn from you
interestingly the first time i heard of an "earth salting" was in reference to warfare in mesopotamian societies. college my prof really pushed the idea of how brutal warfare got by mentioning how they would regularly salt the grounds. now that you mention this makes me wonder how legit even that was
Salt was very valuable. If gold would poison a field - would you sow it to destroy the field? No, of course not. IMO this is just a fairy tale. Maybe it origined in poisoning a water supply during a siege - which happened of course. But salting the ground after having destroyed the enemy seems just absurd.
Generally I tend to interpret people talking about how "brutal" warfare in the distant past was as a massive red flag. It's wishful nonsense - no manner of warfare in history has ever been more brutal than that of our very modern present; to focus on the brutality of the ancients is to hypocritically ignore all the earth-shattering spasms of (frequently genocidal) violence so close to us, whether the world wars or the many far more recent conflicts that never attract a significant audience by the merit of occurring in third world countries
@@melanoc3tusii205 Yeah, It's a weird thing. People in modern times seem to intentionally vilify people who lived in the past. But... what they leave out is... many of those old wars, they destroyed the CULTURE of their enemy. not by killing them all, but by taking over and raising their children to live like the victors did. It's real different when instead of murdering the children.... you ADOPT them. this was actually a rather common practice in many cultures too.
@@melanoc3tusii205 yeah, it's a safe bet that war has always been brutal, only the methods change, and it's pretty much a given, modern methods allow far more "creativity" in inflicting suffering than anything our ancestors had.
Does not seem particularly pragmatic to the earth. Especially, since salt was valuable enough to be used as currency. Then salting the earth would make as much sense as ploughing gold coins into the ground.
How expensive was rising and maintaining an army nack then? How expensive was a war? How much did it pay off? How those compares with how it is today? Carthage was an economic rival very close to Roma's own level I dare to say. Killing their land with salt? was an investment.
@@williamalvarez9563 Except you don't "kill land with salt". It just doesn't work, unless you have astronomical amounts of it, which would have been borderline impossible to acquire in those ancient times.
So one of the things that makes me wonder about the salting the eart thing. Salt was rather valuable, and how much of it would you need to render a city sized patch of ground infertile? And how long would that last anyway? I hate to say it, but this is the first time I've really thought about it.
Was salting of the earth ever done historically, by anyone? Would be a pretty expensive undertaking in the ancient times. Also, is it a war crime if war crimes didn't exist back then? Even using that term is presentism, isn't it?
The thing about warcrimes is they only exist if someone can enforce them. Salting of the earth was a Semitic thing, along with genocide. Quick read of Deuteronomy or judges will show you that lol. “Abimelech sealed his victory over the city of Shechem by sowing it with salt (Judg. 9:45)” apparently the practice was mostly common during the bronze age in the levant with mentions from the hittites and assyrians. But very uncommon outside of that.
Bruh thinks the Jews Christians and Muslims = everyone. Mainly only the people of these religions were barbaric. Nations not infected by any of these religions were much more civilized at the time. India, Indonesia, North America for example.
Didn't plutach mention that when they made Gaius Gracchi go to Carthage to make a settlement they were greeted by bad omens and they couldn't grow crops etc., i can't really remember it well but i remember talking about it on class. Thanks for the great video!
Lead oxidizes when exposed to water much like copper does, that is, a hard outer layer shell forms. It does not precipitate and pit like iron does, and this type of oxidization is one reason why copper and lead were used as piping. They simply decayed less and lasted longer because the oxidized layer would protect the metal. This also means that while detectable, the amount of pure lead leaching into water from a pipe is going to be miniscule after a time. I would imagine the bigger threat of contamination would be during the working process, including rain runoff from the work area. As a plumber, I've always been interested in Rome's use of lead
Ok I love your channel , although I don’t think I’ve ever learned anything new, or at least major new stuff I have read English translations of classic Roman histories and alot on the Punic wars. However I never noticed that none recorded the sewing with salt story. I learned it in elementary school in the 1960s . Never gave it a thought that it was absent in the period sources I can’t say I Knew it was absent until today That’s why I watch channels like yours. All of a sudden you get a new insight you never had History is never just ‘one damn fact after another’
It's simple they were both trying to wipe each other out. Rome was attacked multiple times by Carthage. What do you do when an enemy refuses to let you live, you're forced to take them out
I'm not sure but I thought it was the city in the middle that invited both countries and then the Romans just kicked out the Carthaginians and then the Carthaginians surrounded the city creating a battle that cause the war?
@@claudiaxanderRome didn’t start the war … The Greek cities in Sicily and south Italy were powerful and always fought between each other .. There were protectorate and the most powerful faction protect this complex system … The two understand they were starting to expand in the same area “Mediterranean” and one must submit to the other … Sicily was the bridge between them one need it to keep safe their possessions ( Rome ) , the other need it to have a safe location to eventually punish and keep at bay
@@bingingbinging8597 The western Sicily was a carthaginian province. (Lot of original Phoenician cities were there. For exmple modern day Palermo (Ziz/Panormus), or modern day Marsala (Motya/Lilybaeum). Polybius writes though that Romans started to think about expeling the Carthaginians from Sicily only after the fall of Agrigentum.
As the guy responsible for autonomic management in the Simon Whistler units I feel uniquely qualified to chime in her. As many have noted, our Simon Whistler units have been very popular, many owners choosing to use them as presenters in TH-cam videos. We're not responsible for how owners program a unit, and customers are entirely responsible for what they have their units say. We'd recommend using your Simon as it was intended - construction work and as a pleasure bot.
I believe when one talks of “genocide” or even “war atrocities” to ancient civilizations, it is most often the use of presentism. While we can be appalled by what ancient civilizations did during wartime and peacetime, we have to separate our modern values from the daily actions that were normal in ancient times. We cannot understand past civilizations through a modern lens, but only through their own words and what we know of them.
but we must also realize the wrongness of it by studying through the viewpoint of both neutral history and morality, or other understood as politics. We cannot rid understanding history of morality because than we cannot learn and progress. It being okay at the time does not excuse its wrongness, which if wrong should not be erased but showcased.
My great grandmother hated black people, though she had barely ever met any, and this wasn't 2000 years ago, she lived until I was 5 months old, June 1971. But back then that was pretty normal and even more so in the 1910s and 20s when she was young and the Holocaust hadn't yet happened.
I think the rulers of the ancient world would nod with approval for our brutal 20th century regimes and we are well on our way to eclipsing our forefathers in slaughter!
I can’t speak to the specifics of Roman water however as a water treatment operator, the ph and alkalinity of the water source influence the level of contamination. The harder the water and higher the ph of the water, the less electro chemical reaction between the water and lead. In regards to present day lead pipes, they currently use phosphates and orthophosphates to sequester lead in existing pipes. They also can add chemicals like lime {Ca(OH)2} to increase the ph and alkalinity of the water to decreases lead contamination.
Also, from what I have heard, lime was a primary ingredient in Roman concrete and was what helped it last so long. It so, they were actively using a lead mitigation technique that is used today.
@@buc4415 excellent post. i seem to recall that the concrete was volcanic ash and lime, but they didn't mention that you put the lime in the coconut 'n call me in the Mor- ning :D
I’ve started hitting “don’t recommend channel” whenever Simon’s channels pop into my recommends. Unlike Metatron, Crecganford, etc., he’s more of a mouthpiece than a creator with a personal connection to the content, and that shows in these errors.
Simon is also honest enough to change his mind. Recounting the actions of criminals in his "Casual Criminalist" has led him to no longer oppose the death penalty and support it in some cases.
I guess this whole Salting of Carthage spiel is just one of those historic blunders that refuses to go away, even I vividly remember learning about it in my high school history class. And thank you for having the uncomfortable but necessary conversation about genocide, in this day and age where very serious allegations are being thrown about willy-nilly, they start losing meaning, so it's very important to use words for their proper meaning and not devalue them.
Kind of like the Aztec spiel that said they were blood hungry and practised mass sacrifice for their 'gods' , which the word gods in nahuatl doesn't even exist. 🤣. Our Neoh Liberal History classes provide many historical blunders that want go away.
Well it probably had something to do with the child sacrifice elements of Carthage society, they worship Baal from the Old Testament and sacrifice plays heavy in their religion. Rome was disgusted by this practice that it could’ve been said they destroyed Carthage in propaganda to the Roman Public to glorify their great victory, or alternatively it actually happened because shit none of us were there.
@@sercravenmohead3631 Hannibal traumatized the Romans, and he made that fatal mistake, he ignored his lieutenant who advised an immediate march on Rome after Cannae. Cato the elder later was adamant, Carthage must die.
The story I was taught in school was that the upper classes in ancient Rome were exposed to large amounts of lead in the wine. I don't remember the details, but it was something to do with a sweetener they added to the wine. Allegedly, that contributed to the psychotic behavior of their leaders. Assuming this is true, it still means most of the Romans were NOT poisoned by lead in their wine. Because only the upper classes could afford to drink wine on a regular basis.
The drink was called Grappa and it was made by heating up wine in a lead pot. Only a small amount of lead would’ve been transferred into the drink. It would’ve been hazardous by modern standards. But to actually get neurological damage you’d need to drink it fairly often, like once a day. People were probably only drinking it once a month at most. Lead is bad for adults but it’s worst for children, and kids wouldn’t have been drinking it.
I doubt it was even the case with the upper classes. Modern propaganda most likely. It’s ironic because we get more exposed to toxins than the Roman’s ever did
This video is extremely helpful for a history lover like me. All of us without exception want to be proud of and romanticize our past history, but we need to acknowledge that we also made careless and even careful mistakes that we need to learn from and not repeat them.
I'd be careful about that if I were you. Using a nation's history to define the politics of the present has taken many nations down some very dark paths indeed.
@nicktecky55 it's like utopian progressives, only its utopian conservatism. We look at the past a feel so connected to what we think the past was ... alas still plag
That is a very unusual assertion, that "all of us without exception" wish to revel in a romantic past. That is simply not true, my friend, there are many, _many_ who would rather leave the past behind and who strive for a greater, ideologically dissimilar future
@@page8301 Presumably they are referring to (woefully) popular takes on socialism or even social democracy, wherein it is imagined that the entire left can be summed up as being ideologically bent on "free stuff" and "handouts", as if the working class doesn't produce everything itself. I don't mean to speak for them of course, but I am reminded of the misconception that individuals like Marx were Utopian idealists, when of course such individuals were explicitly anti-utopian and thoroughly materialist
As a big Whistler fan, I appreciate how you both are so respectful towards one another. (Well I haven't seen Simon post any form of response, maybe he did, but i agree he would be humble enough to accept being wrong, or respectfully disagree as you do). Even to the point of linking original video in the description. (Unless its a copywriting issue hahah but i still feel you have the integrity to do so regardless). Apologies for my grammar
He doesn’t really do response videos. He’s admitted on several occasions that despite his broad general knowledge from doing so many videos, he doesn’t remember all of them. Mostly because he’s a presenter of scripts, not the writer which is how he can keep up the content grind.
Oooooooo! A response video to one of Simon's videos! I love his content. I realize that doesn't make him inerrant, though. Also, I haven't watched that particular video, so I'm gonna go do that first, then come back to your's.
Other people at the time did not commit genocide or made men kill each other for the amusement of people or let slave girls be raped by baboons 4:33 in front of thousands of cheering people. These people were barbarians.
@@fij715 To be fair, yes, other people at the time did commit these things. They simply did not have the means to carry it out on the same scale as the romans. Now, one can also wonder why the Romans, who considered themselves to be the absolute height of civilization (which they undoubtedly were for the time) and viewed all other people as inferior, continued to indulge in recreational violence until the point Christianity put an end to it, despite the influence of Greek philosophy and "humanistic" ideals.
Also, salting the ground don't stop the growth of crops Forever in any way. I mean, for example, every year during Winter the roads are salted but every spring the grass Is there.
I remember the claim not being that the entire Roman populace was crazy from the lead poisoning, but that the roman elite was Particularly affected Due to them having the most access to lead cutlery cups, cutlery, and pipes.
I mean the main point is actually that lead poisoning or elevated levels of lead do not lead people to become psychopaths. It leads to health problems and a lower intellect.
The only Roman Emperor I ever read about that was considered driven nuts by possible lead poisoning was Caligula. For the life of me I can't remember where I read or saw it. It was a semi documented decline into madness, to the point he sent soldiers to attack Poseidon by smacking the water with swords.
Very good video; very informative. The many points you bring up to counter or give a more overall balanced 'picture' of this subject, shows considerable research on your part.
Why is it absurd? Wiping out/enslaving 2/3 of the population of Gaul IS brutal, there is no denying that. Nowhere did Simon ever say that the Japanese in unit 731 were NOT brutal or less brutal than the Romans. Why can't both be brutal? Since they are. You seem to suggest that only the most brutal can be called brutal and all else thus isn't brutal?
@@Glo0ze You also need to consider the different time periods. Killing, conquering and enslaving was the norm in the ancient world, if you don't do that someone else will do that to you, tere's simply no choice if you want to survive. But making the kind of experiments on humans that the Japanese did in the 40s is plain crazy and sadistic, there's no need for that to win a war. That's why I would call the Japanese unit 731 brutal but not the Romans
The biggest problem when people get history wrong is that they don't believe the human factor is a constant and think culture dictates how humans think or feel about anything. So if they think a culture "normalized" violence, they imagine everybody living under said culture had no problem brutalizing or murdering each other without thought or care. But if you believe there is something about human nature that is constant, it doesn't take a lot to realize such a characterization of an entire culture can only be a massive exaggeration.
I usually agree with you, but I have to say that there is nothing so outlandish that it could be attributed to Rome and I find myself disbelieving it. While I agree that lead in the water is unlikely to be the cause of the Ancient Romans being psychopaths... removing lead as an excuse leaves you with a group of people who were psychopaths without an explanation, other than they enjoyed violence and gore... preferably (apparently) when inflicted upon others my themselves. That's not so far off from psychopaths.
Simon has a bunch of staff that do the research. He just reads the script. Love his channels... i dont' hold him to task, other than need to hire better researchers, maybe hire extras to vet the research?
I worked with a guy at Lockheed, who had a theory. The theory was: the fall of the Roman Empire was cause by indoor plumbing. That is, they went somewhat insane due to the lead pipes used in Roman houses and buildings. He said that to me back in March of 2000. Edit: I also read some time ago that Ivan the Terrible was afflicted with lead poisoning, which was what made him so terrible as to murder his own beloved son.
didnt we ourself use lead pipes till 1970ish? and italy has quite hard water, especially the rome region which would qickly build a passivation layer inside the pipe. i read somewhere that it was syphilis that made ivan so erraticly insane but it might have been all, mentally cracked from the start+lead+syphilis+hokey medicin of the time=ivan the terrible
@@BruderSenf yea, we did use lead piping. I believe some old houses still have them and changing the pipes is a requirement if the property is sold. It might have been syphilis. I thought I had read it was lead, but it also could have been a combo of things that made Ivan go nuts. Crazy Ivan literally, not just clearing your baffles.
Often the views of the average person are more representative of reality since they're getting things from older research which is less biased in some areas and not as subject to modern political pressure. You see all of the humanities promote esoteric readings and modern framing of oppression. You also see child sacrifice and other practices dismissed or down played because the accusers were Christian/Jewish.
@@TheThreatenedSwan The views of the average person are not more representative of reality. They often get their information from sensationalized videos that are poorly researched, devoid of context and heavily influenced by modern political and societal perspectives. Just scroll through the comment section for examples of this.
A shame I like Simon's videos, but I can never tell if they're accurate but is nice to know he responds well. I like his persona and the way he does narrates his videos.
What I learned about history is that there's a both side of the coin History is written by the winners and there's always a reason to justify war Thanks for the information sir
Here's an idea for a video: Make one of those ranking lists where you rank the different soldier classes (archers, crossbowmen, pikemen, swordsmen, knights, other cavalry etc.) by how safe or how likely they were to survive an average, pitched battle. And you explain why you chose what you chose as you go down the list.
Very interesting,as usual. Good clarification. I always believed the thing about the lead poisoning. As you explained it so clearly, we were all still using it until recent times. We're not raving lunatics, well maybe some. Thank you once again Metatron.
In Ancient Rome, only the rich would have had lead pipes. The bulk of the distribution of water is bound to have been made by cost effective materials. So the larger diameter pipes would not be made of lead, but of clay,, and stone. Lead is expensive, and only used when we start to look at individual villas and houses, and only the wealthy would have been able to afford it. So any lead poisoning would be confined to the top echelon. Additionally, many romans would take care of most of their H2O requirements by drinking wine, not water. Water was used for hygiene, bathing, and washing away fecal matter in the many public toilets. So i don´t see how lead would have ever been this massive health problem.
Crime rates have gone down globally since we stopped using leaded gasoline. I think there is no definitive proof of causality, but this is not something that can be dismissed as a hypothesis. And Simon makes clear it is just that. Roman skeletons do have huge amounts of lead. I can't believe that Metatron just tries to explain that away. Too easy.
The gasoline thing is very real! Also, we are still using lead pipes lmao. At least in America most pipes are made out of lead. I'm talking about the lines that connect to homes, the pipes technically owned by the government or water company (depends on where you live). It's so bad we don't even know the extent of it. And no places in the US are interested in figuring it out because it would cost so much.
@@wmd40 One interesting thing I've seen, and possibly more important than the pipes... is that Romans did also use Lead for tableware. AFAIK, it was seen as something mainly for the wealthy. But more so... lead as a drinking vessel, bowl or plate, some kinds of food will corrode the lead slightly... and whoever eats the food gets a far higher dose of lead than if it had been water. 'cause, well.... Lead is insoluable in water. that's why it got used in pipes so much. Pure water does not corrode Lead. now if the water has stuff like Carbonic acid well... maybe that might dissolve some Lead, but the water itself will not.
One reason Simon may not be as upset at people disagreeing with him is that he very often is reading scripts that have been written for him.
I am not a fan of anything that Simon does. I remember watching a video that he said he had no idea who the Knights Templar were, and he has talk about them a number of times. A lot of the "facts" come from articles from places like the Washington post and so on.
Simon literally calls himself stupid every second video lol. Also I feel bad for the people who can't enjoy his content for what it is. He is far more accurate then most similar channels and unlike most of those channels he doesnt present himself as a font of knowledge. Also stumbling upon him is what ultimately lead me to Metatron.
Simon isn't real he was generated by an algorithm to read scipted content.
@@corylove6636 so you dislike a media person because he is not expert on everything? Of course he cant know all he talks about, his scope of topics is radiculously rich, but he is fairly accurate, good narator and is presenting information in a digestable way. If you want to hear from experts on topics get into a lecture and study the topic.
@@emilspasov4356 I dislike top 10 channels because most of the channels put out a video every day with incorrect data and a lot of people believe everything on there is true. There needs to be a fact checker aspect for this. I stopped watching Simon as soon as I noticed the "facts" are generally pulled from a small article in new outlets like the Washington Post.
I always thought that the salt story was fishy. The region stayed a major grain producer for Rome after Carthage was gone.
In fact, Majorian's fleet destruction by the Vandals was the death blow of the Western Roman Empire. Losing such an expensive fleet itself is a death blow, but it made the WRE practically dependent on its wealthier ERE for any significant operations.
Salt was pretty expensive - to extract and transport. So much salt wasted is not a reasonable assumption.
Even the chosen thinks this is true 😢
@@danvasii9884 Also even with my very limited knowledge of plants and stuff it's going to wash away with the rain. An area only stays salty if there's natural salt in the area and even then you can mediate the soil and ancient people had lots of plant skills.
Yeah, why would the romans destroy perfect arable land that could help them stretch the empire?
Simon is more of a host than a constent creator. Other people do his research and writing.
True, but he does give them lots of credit
"research". He will say you any hype-trash to get few more views.
His channel is leaning towards sensationalism more than towards facts and that's why he's completely unreliable.
He's a mungbean.
Absolutely. Simon's an actor.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the many writers shackled in Simon's basement, providing him with his enormous supply of scripts, as well as the editors chained in his attic, and the team of highly skilled barbers corralled in his garage. May they live long, and continue their good work.
I laughed 😂😂
Brilliant 😂
"Unfortunately, the IA being chained in the basement doesnt have the same thrill involved." -Simon
😂
And prosper, at that.
As a french person, i'm officially asking Italy for reparations for the roman conquest of Gaul.
More seriously, Rome wasn't close to be the most horrific and brutal people in their days, and the other didn't have lead pipes.
(And since people are used to moronic takes on internet, the reparation part is a meme, a joke)
Yes my French brother!! Fight the power and get those reparations. You and all French citizens deserve ever penny
Ironically, french are french because of the roman past and culture, and the celts being governed by the romans
Maybe then France can pay reparations to Haiti.
Now that sounds slightly oxymoronic, since you French are technically Gallo-Latin. But good luck with your lawsuit.
I thought the franks came AFTER the roman empire .. the gauls were celts werent they? not french
For the talk of Roman brutality, Rome was rather generous toward those who simply threw the towel in early. Those who accepted being part of Rome had the opportunity to become citizens, and could partake in the empire's economy and politics. They were not occupied so much as assimilated in, and did end up having a say in the direction of the nation. By ancient standards this is rather progressive for a conquering country to offer.
I mean, sort of. It depended on a lot of factors, including just who the personality in charge was. Not a lot of help for the Raetians, a lot of the Galls, etc. There isn’t a lot of argument that what Caesar did wasn’t genocide unless you take the most absolutely narrow definition of that word.
That said, taken on balance, while Rome was probably a more brutal than average pre-modern civilization, it’s not anywhere near the top groups.
@adamseidel9780 the only genocide the Romans are guilty of are the Sabines.
Well there's some religions will not kill you if you deny your own and join them. All throughout history if you turned your back and joined the enemy... You might be free but you're still a coward. All throughout history if you did not deny who you were or where you for from you could die. So the Romans treating people good that just surrendered and gave in did not make the Romans good.
Same with the Mongols. If you acknowledged that you were their vassal they'd leave you well alone as long as you paid tribute, if you didn't however... boy oh boy.
thats what they want you to think.
Remember, they wrote the history.
Simon:
“The Romans were psychopaths”
Assyrians:
“Are we a joke to you?”
Both are evil.
Yes, yes you are joke…because your not marketable.
Aztecs:
"Oh hellooo there!"
Ammorites: 'sup
@@ibrahimsuleiman8473 British empire: are we a joke to you?
I love the wholesome disclaimer at the beginning. “You’re cool, we like you, but you’re incorrect.” That by itself earned a sub.
Still could have made his own content without refrencing another channel. Clearly clout chasing
@@seunmejule651 WATCH THE VIDEO, he isn't clout chasing he is correcting the video he's talking about.
Well he is the archangel Michael isn't he??
“Salting the Earth” - This myth worked on me and cost me a lot of money and time. I had a giant play set on my property which stood on an enormous playfield covered in wood chips, landscape fabric, etc. All of this was done at a cost over $10k. Fast forward a few years and weeds are everywhere. Fast forward a couple of years and I get tired of trying to keep up after this giant plot of land two or three times a season.
So, being a learned sort I remember my history and think to myself, “Fuck it. Nuclear option - I’m going to Salt the Earth.” Bought a shit load of rock salt, tilled up the borders around our playset, dumped in dozens of bags of salt, tilled it together and waited for my beautiful scorched Earth genocide to commence.
It. Did. NOTHING. Whole area was over grown in weeks.
So, not only did it NOT happen, not only is it a MYTH, even if it did, IT DOESN’T EVEN WORK.
My dad did the same with his garden and it didn’t work!
haha, I did it as well, it worked for a week or two, many plants died but before I knew it, rain had washed it away and plants were growing
It heavily depends on your soil to be fair. Coming from someone who that spends most of their time fightin extremely heavy clay soil, salt is a death sentence to any plants in my yard. It can be remedied, but it’s a real pain in the ass that involves a lot of soil amendments, tiling, and aerating to fix. If you have loamy or Sandy soil, just water it and you’re good. But if you’ve got heavy clay soil, dumping salt on your yard works as advertised. It’ll wear off eventually, but I can be sure I won’t be able to get much aside from stubborn weeds to grow there for the rest of the season.
Plants from coastal enviroments " am I a joke to you?"
If something as simple as salt killed plants so effectively, we would never have invented weed killers, because you could just sprinkle a little table salt on them instead lol
A little bit of logic goes a long way!
I feel vindicated... I am italian, I am almost 50... around 37 years ago I asked my history teacher if the "salting of the hearth" was a littlebit of a rethorical figure... the reprimand I got out of it still bugs me because when I got to the end of school exam my grade was reduced... I asked my teacher if it was the rethorical figure because, as you said, salt was a currency and the roman had at least a hundred more efficient way to cancel once and forever Carthage... GO ME! (thanks, amazing video as always!)
You figuratively salted your school career by asking that question.
i mean, couldn't you report your teacher for biased grading?
@@sakesaurus Only in the US you can sue your teacher for giving you a bad grade.
I had something similar happen to me at the hands of a particularly vindictive college professor; she made a small factual error (which was more of a minor detail than anything else in the grand scheme of things), and I made the mistake of opening my mouth. In response, she deliberately tried to fail me out of the class; to my eternal amusement, she was unsuccessful - because a huge chunk of our grades for that class was made up of multiple-choice Scantron tests that I aced. Should I have said anything about her error or just kept my mouth shut? To this day, I'm on the fence about it. It wasn't exactly a hill that I wanted to die on, metaphorically speaking, but it all came out well for me in the end, I suppose.
if people were as witty back then as they are today, I could see how the term _'salting the Earth (with Carthaginians' tears)'_ may have gotten coined, lmao \o/
Simon responds positively because unlike most youtubers...
He rarely wrote his own script or did his own research. He has virtually nothing to be defensive about in a personal sense.
Not to downplay how positive the attitude is but it's somewhat easier for him.
Last I checked, there's still no retraction for saying the A6M is a bomber.
@@101jir Welcome to the olden days of dive-bombing. Next you tell me the StuKa was not a bomber neither.
"rarely" lol
Ever thought about he grew?
@101jir may not say bomber in manufactor's specs but it was surely used as one. What Is your point? Cause your the inaccurate one in this case my dude, you should try doing some fact checking once in awhile before you comment. Turns out when they flew those planes into pearl Harbour it wasn't a bombing, America should of never entered the war......
@@Ashley-wi4ng "Surely it was used as one." Okay, then name one fighter that cannot be called a bomber. If any plane were ever to be called a fighter, it's the A6M. Literally any fighter "can be used" as a bomber. That doesn't make it correct to call it one.
Also, the A6M wasn't the one doing the bombing, it was the D3A. A6Ms were strafing fighters and/or killing those that made it airborne. So no, I'm not inaccurate, you need to check your facts.
@Metatron
Hi, a neurologist here. First thank you sir for your good work, keep it up! Second, I'd like to join the debate about lead poisoning as possible factor in declining of Roman empire. It's not as big of a stretch as you seem to think. First of all, the symptoms you describe are referring to acute lead poisoning, for example in a factory worker who is exposed to really high doses in short period of time. And yes, that level of exposure was rather unlikely for general population of Rome. But what's interesting in this conversation is the effect of constant exposure to small doses of lead with children - there's a clear correlation to lower iq, shorter attention span, asocial and dyssocial behaviour, concentration and memory issues and aggression. You asked in your video, where are all the sociopaths today since we're still using lead today. There is a study (if you're willing to continue this discussion, I'll find it for you) that shows a correlation between the time lead based paint and gasoline were used and the spike in violent crime in US, and decline in it after both were banned. The lines are shifted around 15 years- a generation of children exposed to lead.
You made a point that lead piping wasn't common in all parts of the empire, I agree with that. But we should remember that the ruling class was italocentric. It was rare for even rulers of distant provinces to be natives, they USUALLY came from Rome or other lead-piped italian cities.
Also, high lead concentration in water doesn't mean that everyone becomes a violent sociopath all at once, it means more people than usually are. The changes in society are slow, because they are generational, or even multigenerational.
In conclusion, I don't think we should dismiss lead poisoning as just another hypothesis but take it quite seriously, since modern science gives us strong evidence about consequences of lead poisoning in children.
Again, thank you for your time and keep up the good work.
I agree. They will most likely be talking about plastic poisoning of our times in a couple hundred years!
Lead is extremely stable and dense heavy metal. It has no affinity to dissolve in water. Leaded water is not a thing. Lead has also no biological functions whatsoever. All the lead in circulation was basically put there by us. Evidence of the Romans wide use of lead can be found in glacial deposits. Essentially all the adults susceptible to acute lead poisoning were the ones mining and refining the ore and manufacturing subsequent lead products. Offering any amount of lead-sweetened wine or any other lead-acetate laden products to indulge in for nobility, their children nor anyone else, would be considered a criminal offense with our current knowledge.
When Standard Oil started producing Tetraethyl-Lead as antiknock agent for global use to enhance the effectiveness of our combustion engines, NIH (or whatever the agency was called at the time) outright lied and sent letters to every european country, lying how they have researched the compound and found it perfectly safe for humans. Nobody mentioned or cared about the families, who got murdered by employees, whose minds went mush from contact with the stuff. "Ethyl" was the marketing name. "Butterfly-House" they nicknamed the production facility.
Deploying tetraethyl-lead upon EVERYONE of us, regardless did we have a car or not, resulted in this global lead poisoning epidemic, which effects can be seen in the statistics you brought up. Evil, EVIL stuff.
We were ALL sacrificed on the altar of PROFIT and "progress". That's Global Capitalism in a nutshell.
Thank you. I was going to say something similar. One thing that strikes me, just off the top of my head, is the low birth rate among the Roman elite, with many families having just one or two children and many didn't make it to adulthood (Agricola had one child, did the Emperor Claudius have any children? Nero? Caligula? Wasn't Augustus concerned about this & told the Equites to go out & get married & have children?) which could have been simply a high infant death rate, something we didn't get on top of until the past 100 years or so, but as low level long term lead ingestion will lead to male and female infertility, I think it's worth considering.
Another interesting point regarding lead poisoning in Rome, meaning specifically the City of Rome, even dough lead pipes were widely used in domestic plumbing the water was really rich in minerals and created thick deposits almost everywhere in went, it is well documented the constant efforts made to keep aqueducts clean and the periodic closures to do so. So a lining of minerals coated most if not all pipes, also water was not stored in lead vessels, usually those were just ceramics or terracotta.
Growing up the pipes weren't discussed as a significant source of lead. Just that some of their cooking/serving vessels may have contained lead. Which in certain circumstances may cause exposure if the food/drink was heated or acidic.
This is brought up in Simon's original video.
Another ancient technique lost to antiquity, the making of lead pipes from dough. I mean it might have been poisonous but it was damn tasty. 😂
The Romans sprinkled their food and drinks with lead-acetate as a sweetener. Their bones contain 100x as much lead as that of iron-age people. The Romans definitely were poisoning themselves with lead. The extent to which this contributed to their demise is open to debate, but it must have had an effect on their society.
Always always the highest quality informative videos
Salting the ground was taught in elementary school. Then we actually tried salting a place to prevent weeds. Few months and its weedy. Then i thought about this salt the fields story. So they mined tons of salt just to spread it on fields to temporarily prevent plantlife. Taking lot of manpower and time and salt. It seemed stupid. And they teach it as fact... saying its annoying is an understatement
I agree with you, can you imagine the amount of salt needed to ruin the soil around carthage, for years to come. Not forgetting the man power needed for such a task, it would have been a huge waste of time and resources.
Basically the first time a big rain comes through all the earth is back to normal.
You can use salt against weed, but you also need vingar. Mix them and you get a light solution of acidic and hydrochloric acid. But doesnt work as good as modern stuff :)
Maybe the soil in Carthage wasn't really that good and the salt just exacerbated the issue. I meanCarthage was in the desert and desert aren't really known for their lush brown soil
@@alexanerose4820 Back then it was far different from what we see today. You have to remember that it's 2000 years of time difference and weather readjustment and water rearrangement.
In the German areas controlled by the Romans, the lead pipes were often so heavily calcified by the calcareous water that lead could not react with water. I don't know if the Romans used a strong calcareous spring on purpose, but in my opinion it was a brilliant protection for the time.
Sometimes things just happen
Don't forget Romans had running water. So it wasn't standing get still in the pipes, reducing greatly the level of contamination in most cases.
All kinds of pipes would oxidize. Copper too and copper oxide is toxic. Calcified pipes make the water "cleaner"
Something similar happens with aluminium except it's on the pipe side of things. When it oxidizes, aluminium oxide remains on the outer layer of the pipe, rather than flaking off, like iron oxide does, leaving a protective layer between the pipe and the water.
You can pretty much think of any random ass topic on earth and find Simon Whistles doing a mini documentary about it. But FYI, he doesn’t create all the content. He is essentially a hired host/personality for many different channels. He is good at presenting and any argument made in a refined English accent is instantly more compelling to an American audience. The beard definitely helps his credibility too.
Yup, he has a niche and he fills it well.
He’s the owner and narrator of his channels. He’s very clear and gives lots of credit to his writers and editors, often giving them call outs in his videos on his longer form channels like Brain Blaze and Decoding the Unknown. It’s why I love his channels so much, he’s a proper business man with a great personality and talent who treats his employees well.
It doesn't matter how good of an employer he is.
The fact is as a creator he's leaning towards sensationalism more than facts therefore he's not reliable. Every video he makes about old civs is about them being too brutal and savage he doesn't understand the context a lot of times behind this brutality.
He'd make a vid about Spartans and said they're too brutal because they treated their slaves bad but will also disregard the number of slaves was too big in sparta and often their revolutions could endanger the very existence of Sparta. He'll do things like that all the time. He doesn't care about facts.
@@GothPaokihe is far from that, his channels are more focused into passing unbiased information researched by his writers, most of them with specialization in the areas of the specific channel. They can get things wrong, but you clearly don't know his intentions and his writers.
@@rafaelbrisolara7599 I don't know his writers but i see the end result and it's far from factual.
Saying he's unbiased doesn't mean he's right. And even saying he's unbiased is highly debatable. His approach to old civs is in itself wrong. Just the last couple of months he's had half a dozen videos about how brutal old civs were and in none of those videos he actually takes into account the context of these civs and their practices.
👏 Applause for the way Metatron forms arguments. Very strong logic and research skills. A true academic, linguist and philosopher. 👏
People have this misconception that when Carthage was destroyed, the Phoenician people were all killed in a genocide as well. Not at all. Yes, the capitol was destroyed, but the Punic people and civilization were simply absorbed into the Roman Empire. The Punic language continued to be spoken for many centuries afterward.
Hell, roman Carthage and roman North Africa in general are relevant portions of roman History and legacy
Not to mention the entire med is now Semitic admixture by way of their r$pe babies. Even Rome fell to their perpetual diddling of women captives.
@@David_Alvarez77 his father was not roman his father and mother were both berbers
That doesn't change the fact that Carthago's destruction, with all its people, was a major fellony.
They were Rome's ally at the moment, thay accomplished all the payments to Rome and even they gave grain to Rome for free. They asked for a less than decorous surrender and tried to raise a decent defense (which they didn't achieve) only when saw it was all loss.
@@jotape5681 i dont disagree just wanted to correct you on that part.
I've spent the last few weeks traveling to many ancient cities like Troy, Pergamon, Ephesus, Alexandria Troas, Parion, Assus, and Apollo Smintheion. I have lots of photos of the Roman pipework in houses, gymnasiums, bath houses, etc. They are all clay, and almost identical to modern clay pipes. Yes, the Romans used lead in their plumbing, but only in specific aspects of the plumbing system. The majority of pipework in these building was clay.
Also due to the way of construction back then the water was in constant flow, led is more of an issue when the water faucet is turned of and you later use standing water instead of actual fresh water.
Regardless of the type of pipes someone uses, if the water was turned off for some time, it's always good NOT using the water coming from the tab at first for drinking water.
@@wolfgangkranek376I always run the tap a moment before using the water. I've never liked the thought of using water that's been sitting still in the pipes.
Do you have an Instagram account or anything that shows photos of all those amazing sites you’ve visited?
@@jimmcdougle3404 No, sorry, I don't, but I did take 1000s of photos. I'm a modeler/sculptor too, so a lot of it was for reference, especially the museum photos.
Thank you for contextualizing the Third Punic War. It's essential to understanding Rome's actions in the face of an existential threat. In addition, spreading the myth they sacrificed children is just as apocryphal as the salting of Punic soil. And considering the fact that Polybius was with then General/Consul Scipio Aemilianus during the fall of Carthage, you'd think he would've mentioned the salting of the earth. Solid work, boss 👍👍
Yeah I always read the third punic war conclusion as Rome basically saying "fuck these guys, they can't stop causing us problems so we're just gonna get rid of them."
I still believe the destruction of Carthage was completely unjustified . Romans were completely afraid and scared of Carthage, they still remembered Hannibal and how close he was of destroying Rome to the ground but let's be real after that Carthage was incredibly weak and would never be a threat to Rome ever again. There would never be another Hannibal just like there was never another Napoleon , military super genius are very uncommon , one every 1000 years
@@Martel24k Still, it was a matter of prudence to annihilate Carthage. Therefore, a justified act (not in the moral sense, for such a thing means absolutely nothing).
Well, there is proof they sacrificed babies so there’s that though
@@LaB567 Are you talking about the Romans or the Carthaginians? Cause I have seen some recent documentaries about it possibly being a practice the people of Carthage did themselves in both good times and bad. There's little proof of this actually happening anywhere, but it might have been like in the films and books when the civilians will want to kill themselves to avoid capture or anything the enemy might want to do to them .
not to justify atrocities or anything, however, a lot of the brutality that the Romans committed was just par for the course during that time period. Other societies were brutal too....the Romans sometimes systematized things a bit more, but otherwise I don't think they were special on the brutality front....people just don't have the context...
This was a battle for supremacy not survival though the Romans were indeed not that brutal all things considered.
Yet your example is bad and only works on limited scale. Like had you said they were brutal to deal with their neighbours that's acceptable but pushing it all the way to Carthage kinda loses validity because of the geographic scope.
There's more truth to this post than many realize. We know so much about Roman brutality because they recorded it. The was plenty of brutality outside of the Romans, but we don't have near the amount of records to learn of it.
@@VTdarkangel not to mention the special focus that the Roman Empire gets in Western history...compared to other Empires, even without considering the sources of info and whatnot....
Atrocities are always justifiable. That’s what men do.
After the Parthians defeated the Roman army they severed Krassus’s head and filled it with molten gold and after that they proceeded to parade it around the villages and towns for everyone to see. Such brutality was common for that period which is in part why generals and kings that were defeated preferred to poison themselves than be caught alive.
One cannot win a war without being brutal, and at a time where the weapons and combat style were of that type it would make it look even more brutal, but is a sword or spear really more brutal than a stinger missile or artillery. This idea was looked at in detail in Apocalypses Now. If you don't out force the enemy you will lose. Ergo any winner throughout history was brutal. At a time when slavery was the norm and wars and border issues regular events, where citizens watched people fight in arenas, how else can someone today judge them. This is a very dangerous thing to do because if you don't take into context the way of life at the time you will never understand it.
You are highly intelligent. I wonder if people like that can be brilliant when objectivity is a struggle. Like when you have skin in the game.
when two people fight with switchblades, they either both die, or one manages to survive pretty wounded, because everyone thinks they are better than the opponent, and if you get injured in melee you will be put down
as ranged weapons kept increasing in lethality people stopped being so confident in their abilities since you can die from something you cannot react to, and this made wars more tactical and with a high amount of stalemates
so if you see two melee armies fighting back in the days, they will all die
@@allenanderson4911 Oppenheimer.
@@allenanderson4911 I worked in corrections and it was a combination of control and force. There was a joke that said to take down an inmate you can use all the force he uses + 10%, but that is wrong you need as much force to overcome his and to take him down. That being said in the last two thirds of my career my talk down was over 90%. It beats rolling around on the floor and getting writers cramp. When I ordered the use of force I always told them to go in at 100% if you go in with less you lose.
@ZoomerStasiNot to mention that the Sack of Troy was (according to Herodotus) the catalyst of the animosity between the Greeks and Persians, leading to yet more wars that lasted several generations.
Simon is an actor that lends his voice and acting skills to multiple channels.
yeah.
listening to him unscripted is a real eye opener to the fact that he's not very bright irl.
Sure, he's a talented demagogue.
@@whitetiana3022 He's smarter than you apparently. lmfao
@@alexandervargas5304 Talent has to be acquired though, you are not born with talent, since talent is about skills being useful for other things.
So where did Mozart got his talent from if he wasn't born with it? His father started to cultivate Mozarts skills AFTER his father realised how much talent Mozart was born with.@@Leftyotism
THANK YOU.....I have fought the "There's no Roman account or proof for the salting of Carthage for years!." And I always get push back with things like, "But this scholar said this, and this scholar said that." And I always answer, "But which Roman said it, or even suggested that it happened!" Why would they salt the earth, when one of the primary reasons they wanted Carthage was for the ability to use the lands for farming. Think about it people.
That and in that time period salt was extremely valuable even being used as currency in some regions.
Next will be told that they plowed gold into the fields to make them to chunky to farm...LOL
@@PreacherwithoutaPulpit "I only wanted to plant some olive trees, but all I find is this goddamn gold!"
@@martins.4240 That sounds like that could be a light novel title lol
I can confirm that none of the Ancient Greek Scholars that Metatron mentioned in the video ever mentioned anything about salting Carthage! 👍🏻
@@SpartanLeonidas1821 Oh absolutely and that was my point earlier. I have gotten into debate after debate with both experts and amateurs with this topic. They always say "We know this happened for certain because ABC said this or that in their work." And I always have to ask the question, "Where did ABC get their information? Because there are no Roman sources that say this or even hint they did this. Not to mention, we know what the Romans did with the region after they won...if they made the land infertile with salt then how did they magically start using the farmland as one of their main agricultural centers right after? How did they sustain their later colonies there?" It just doesn't make any sense. Now it's obvious what happened, someone got poetic and used the reference to highlight the total domination of the Carthage, that's fine. But somewhere along the line, the world started to believe it really happened. And now, if you say it didn't happen, the world reacts like you're the crazy one.
I must've watched that video some months ago and someone pointed out something that sat true with me. The proof of Roman's bloodlust is how as a society the meticulously took to recording their culture through literature & art which is different from some of the communities that were it's contemporaries or even came after them. The person under Simon's video went ahead to mention that other communities were just as brutal as Rome (though it's scale eclipsed them because of the empire's size) but could get a pass either because of the fewer number of reliable records or lack of scrutiny and attention paid to them like Rome. They also went ahead to mention that we should also marvel at the ideal of relative "peace" in the current era coz throughout history spanning different regions and eras, spilling blood was the pattern; survival for the fittest style. Showing fear/hesitation=vanquished/destruction/domination, kill or be killed...survival=being ingeniously bad.
People will seriously argue that Phoenician (or Amerindian) society didn't engage in infanticide because it's Jews and Christians accusing them. This is also the one case where they will downplay Roman violence too
Amerindian or african (not to take away from central asians, but the more eastern asians too) accounts would make for a very effective horror and "evil history!1!1" reading.
Although we still know what they did despite not being as extremely detailed as the accounts in Europe and in the Far East with the chinese and the japanese.
@@dusk6159 Even things like Indian women burning themselves on pyres or mass ritual killings in Africa happened incredibly recently. And while Britain gets blamed for slavery due to the anti-white cultural regime, it was the nations they ruled over who were most resistant to its ending.
@@TheThreatenedSwan Not to mention the already incredibly huge and overwhelming thing that is humans chastes and India. Older India all the way to the very India in the current world today.
If someone wants to know something about brutality in warfare, I recommend Chinese classics Records of the Grand Historian, also known by its Chinese name Shiji, which is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. There were often mentioned massacres of whole armies AFTER battle, numbering tens of thousands of surrenders by victor force.
I've been in love with Romans since birth in Algeria we have a lot of roman cities names and ruins everywhere in the country I visited some and now planing to learn every single romance language I already speak French and Spanish still a lot to add and one day Latin why not
Salvite Saludos ❤
The thing about the lead poisoning... in toxicology we had an example of Romans drinking mostly sweetened wine, coming from lead acetate forming in leaded vessels, which were used to make some kind of syrup. Also the lead acetate was sweet as well... So if there was lead poisoning, it was mostly the upper class (although I'd argue you'd get cheap wine there as well). All in all it's an oversimplification to say the Romans were becoming mad bc of lead poisoning.
I was expecting you to mention sapa, the lead acetate sweetener which was in common use back then. Claiming lead piping was a cause, is somewhat silly, especially because the bulk of the piping was not lead. But direct ingestion of lead acetate is really different.
I'm 43, growing up it was common knowledge not to drink water from the bathroom in older houses because the lead pipes in the bathrooms often were not changed out to save costs. We were also told not to lick the paint or eat paint chips haha
Where I'm from it's also a way to call someone stupid either openly ("How much paint chip flavored ice cream do you eat to get this way?"), or being "subtle" ("Lot of lead paint in the house you grew up in, was there?")
I mean, the Romans were definitely brutal, but I don't know about _more_ brutal than others. I think there's an odd trend these days of 'bias towards the winners' of history, where people like to attack the brutality and evil of any civilization that had great success.
There's a similar thing where people complain about the brutality of the vikings, but again, they weren't any more brutal (or less) than the others at the time. They were just more likely to show up at your door.
The Vikings didn’t commit genocide
They also forget they are THE BIGGEST colonizer/conquerors, the ones aimed by them sure took the leason by heart later on
Yes because every successful civilization is by definition brutal. The Chinese may have been marginally better.
I think it’s because there’s a societal struggle to think of people as neither good nor bad but usually somewhere in between. It reminds me of how in high school, a lot of American kids realize their country ISN’T the best in the world, but then instead of thinking “hmmm, wow, guess we’re not perfect and that we have issues and strengths like any nation or people” it’s “America sucks, America is exceptionally terrible and horrible and greedy and bad.” It’s like there’s a cognitive inability to accept flaws in people you admired without going to the opposite extreme. Plus you’ve got the “actually white people and every civilization association relating to them are evil, sociopathic, inhuman colonizers” going on.
Exactly, it's bias against the winners, which really is just another form of white guilt. They feel bad about being on the winning side, and forget that conflict was the law then, and it is unavoidable that whoever came out on top would have to be brutal and have lots of cruel deeds in their history. Hell, that's probably the chicken and the egg answer to why Roman culture was so brutal (even outside of war): they were victorious because they were brutal, they kept being brutal because it kept them victorious. It's basic anthropology; long-lasting cultures are the way they are because it fucking works.
Thanks for this video, I always thought the salt story was a bit much. It just seems like the amount of salt required would be so massive that it would have been an unrealistic undertaking.
i find it strange that a lot of people in societies that consume countless hours of Violent movies, video games, television shows, music and so on, Find the violent aspects of Roman society so hard to comprehend, that they think something like the use of violence as entertainment means the Roman's must have been poisoned or insane to enjoy things like that.
I enjoy the content and appreciate the time and effort put into there creation.. Thank you
And I find it strange mongolia rarely gets name dropped in discussions of ancient brutality. Their steppe plumbing infrastructure was marvelous!
The main difference is that the violence in video games and films isn't real.
There is a difference between watching a movie where actors fake injuries and death, and going to live shows where fellow people are put to slaughter for real.
By the way, thinking that these shows were an abomination and the negation of common decency isn't just a biased opinion from our modern age, it was also the opinion of many a contemporary writer.
Don't find it strange, comparing movies or video games to watching actual violence for entertainment is completely wrong.
@@LuzikArbuzik77Never seen a boxing match, have we?
@OutsiderLabs There were boxing matches in ancient Rome too.
The question pertains to actual, lethal violence, as in running a blade through a living person's throat and letting them drown in their blood for everyone to see, which I don't think constitute a well sought after form of entertainment in today's world (save for some southern and middle eastern countries).
So try to stay on topic, please.
Simon produces so much content on so many different topics (written and researched by different writers) that he probably already has forgotten this particular one :)
Simon produces so much content that I stopped following him because there is just no way he is doing enough research and I just don't want to go on repeating any errors he make. I prefer listening to less but more thoroughly researched content.
@@kangirigungithe good news is there’s no way he’s doing all the research for a his videos.
@@kangirigungi he doesnt do the research. He pays us writers to do it and does genuinely fact check it.
He's a hack, that if you see him on a video you might as well avoid it
@@thelegalliam Their research consists of the front page of a google search and they dont fact check.
"Lead poisoning still happens today, where are all the psychopaths?"
In governments and TikTok
There's also the theory that leaded petrol caused the spike in crime during the 20th century.
For real, just navigate the web for a few hours. We are not much better than the Romans.
One thing I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt, and which Simon's video is the perfect example of, is that our Modern viewpoint is almost entirely incompatible with the ancient view point. It is wise not to impose our views on the people of the past.
Then you cannot criticize historical atrocities? Because most European powers were antisemitic and imperialist in the past, you would not judge the Nazis?
@@Peter-jo6yu We can know that they happenened and make an active effort to not enable anyone wanting to repeat them. An the nazis are a fringe case because they were bad even for the lower standards of human decency of the early 20th century Europe.
@@Peter-jo6yuyou can judge the actions of anyone but you can’t compare our views to theirs. It’s pointless and creates an inaccurate understanding of the culture in question.
We believe the Romans were unusually brutal because the Christians wrote the history books.
@@Peter-jo6yu Still NO. That's the problem with humans, they are always trying to insert themselves into any possible situation. Every situation has those who benefit and those who don't. It is called the conflict of interest. A lion wants to eat the gazelle and the gazelle doesn't want to be eaten. That's how life works and always will work. There is no such thing as equality and it is impossible to force everyone to be equal in the first place.
The Nazis were people like any other. They had their enemies and they had their friends. You may not like what they did and spread that narrative to others but likewise, they liked what they did, believed in it and spread it to others. That's what ideals are, they are ideals. If you say the Aryan people are better than all other races just because, that is a idealized statement. You can't actually disprove it using emotion. You could disprove it using fact by compiling a list of all other races, comparing them in all kinds of areas and then working out which one is most favored by natural selection in theory, but that isn't what was going on.
Likewise, saying all races are equal is also an idealized statement that has no factual basis yet people spread it as if it were propaganda simply in the hopes of it not causing racial discrimination. the Aryans are not the ideal race and all races are not equal so why are we pretending that one is an acceptable statement to make and the other one isn't? It's simple. One statement appeases more people than the other one which is why it is accepted and THAT is the issue.
Humans don't care about facts, they care about feelings. If a guy told me he was going to eliminate my whole family, the natural response would be to just k*ll him. After all, how can he then k*ll my family if he is already dead? Instead what is the accepted response? To call the cops and say some guy said something and at best get a restraining order and at worst tell me they won't act because he hasn't actually done anything. What will any of that mean to him? Even if I got a restraining order, that doesn't stop him sneaking up to my house and k*lling us all. I could end his very threat in an instant by eliminating him from my life permanently yet am expected not to act because it isn't the "moral way" to act. Me not acting in that moment means I have a higher chance of seeing the consequences unfold.
Your whole "moral way is the right way" statement is complete nonsense. Morals accomplish nothing whatsoever. Facts and practicality will always be more important than mere emotions and archaic human idealism. It didn't work then and it never will. We are animals that act in our own benefit because to not do so means we risk our own lives and that is not naturally appropriate unless you are an animal like an ant who are literally bred to be complete fodder because the survival of the colony is all that matters with no f*cks given to individual members.
NO human is going to choose to willingly live like that unless they are stupid.
The myth about "salting the earth" by Romans being popular right now is not so surprising, people tend to gravitate to the most outstanding versions since they will give the strongest response from the audience. Similar with the Medusa myth, Medusa is a monster that was established as a monster from the beginning but the 1 scholar described Medusa as "rosy cheeked" and suddenly it sprouted this entire cult that wants to victimise Medusa as tragic figure and what not
Are you sure? I'd wager that has more to do with Ovid's origin story for Medusa being the more popular version than the original Greek version. From our modern perspective, she is undeniably a more tragic figure in Ovid's version.
I thought the Gorgon Sisters were all demi-goddesses.
@@guanglaikangyi6054 They were but it is not stopped them to be monsters, it is like Loki's childrens from the nordic myths.
@@guanglaikangyi6054I mean the Cyclops and hecatonchires are the children of primordial deities but are the considered gods
Well, in hindsight, I felt that salting entire cities was a tremendously useless waste of precious salt
Dude imagine if Simon reviewed chinese ancient history, where millions dying and other few deciding to eat the dead was just another tuesday on any given dynasty.
Chinese history is metal as hell. When they have a civil war they do NOT play games
The og bioleninists.
He has actually. And several other ones including Nanking.
“Fuck around and find out” - Sun Tzu
Not just the dead, there was was that one city in the Tang dynasty where the general ordered the men to kill and eat the civilian population during a siege (starting with his wife, to show he was serious). 30,000 civilians got eaten. Though the city did fall, its delaying action did prove to be a strategic victory in the end if I remember correctly.
EDIT: It was the siege of Suiyang
I like Simon Whistler and some of his channels but he does sometimes get some things very wrong, I'm glad you made this video I learned a lot
22:40 Something really similar happened here in Argentina like a hundred and stuff year ago. between 1878 and 1885. In that time most of what is now know as Argentina was infact nomads land. A buch of violent native tribes lived there and dedicated their time to raid argentinan farms and kidnap women and children. And even though historians and scholars try to pass it as an injust massacre and try to convince young children (included myself when I was young) that we are the mean evil ones and the mapuches where all peace and love. The massacre happened because most of the soldiers hated the mapuches because of all the raping and pillaging that had happened. Even when their generals told them that it was just to push them back and increase our borders.
I know, right! Your European ancestors from across the ocean were just peacefully colonizing the land and not letting those native tribes use it for like some silly grazing and food and stuff and then absolutely out of nowhere and for no reason at all they were violently attacked! They were just forced to respond with an already existing army that was never ever used until that point. I just don't understand why some people can't just peacefully get colonized. Well hopefully the Mapuche learned their lesson and now get fucked in silence.
Rome’s engineering was of high quality and importance. If lead poisoning were such a long term generational problem then maybe Rome’s great engineering achievements would not have occurred if the IQ of Romans would have been seriously impacted
Not necessarily, a generation of americans are significantly lead poisoned yet the nation is still the richest on earth. Lead poisoning having a detrimental impact on the Romans doesn't make them so stupid they can't manage great feats of engineering.
lead poisoning is why being a drunkard was so much more stigmatized back then, because it impacted you even more with the lead content as well as any future children. you were essentially dooming your entire bloodline to being peasants or worse
Lead poisoning is a long term generational problem all over the world now, thanks to tetra ethyl lead in gasoline. But we still have many feats of engineering.
Plumbum.
Plumber.
That is all.
Ironically, lead pipes are only an issue if your water is _too clean,_ otherwise it scales over rather quickly.
Great clarification!! Thanks. There always seems to be more in historical events than it first appears. Thanks again.
Really engaging video, I do like your approach to explaining these things.
The whole 'why were they so brutal' and similar does fall into the mythologizing of Rome in general. Since it isn't from the perspective of a historian but a lot of the casual, pop cultural coverage that easily falls into narratives. People look for a reason for x and y things for Rome's 'story'.
Yesterday a Timeline video popped up on TH-cam that focused on Rome's cruelty, starting with the fraternicide and rapes in its origins story.
@@ronald3836 So a narrative? Right when there's tons of content telling us how great a Queen Cleopatra was and how bad Romans are they release content saying how bad Romans are. I bet you think that's totally just "history" and not a narrative.
@@Drak976 what is your problem? I made a factual observation.
Sei un bravo uomo Metatron. Adoro il tuo canale! Continua così; abbiamo bisogno di storie basate su fatti e non su sciocchezze. Rispetto da Toronto Canada.
Oh...what pleasure to read Italiano ❤....grazie...I understand but am lacking any practice to parlo this lingua.
P.s. my whole life Cicero was Si-se-ro, more or less (the 'S' being very short, sharp) and here comes Meta and goes 'Ki-ke-ro' .😂...I love, love, looove his crisp pronunciation) My son is partly Siciliano which is only a cherry on the top of my love affair with Italian culture. Ciao da New York(or 'a'?). (Sorry for brutalizing your language 😢)
Simon's misplaced certainty and black and white thinking needed challenging. Thanks.
he is wrong about a lot and when he has addressed it in the past he has pretty much said 'other people write the scripts, not me' as an excuse for being wrong. He doesnt care about being factual. He only cares about views...which is a problem because he presents himself as an informative source which he clearly isnt
Did you watch Simon's video? Every sentence of Simon makes clear it the lead poisoning hypothesis is only a hypothesis.
Metatron's criticism is really just criticism of a long series of academic research and history books.
@@Redd_Nebula But he isn't lying here, he is just a frontman because out of the team he is the most charming personality and has a good "radio voice". In their older videos you could sometimes see a different person, that guy is one of the writers who actually makes the videos.
simon has script writers! some of them do good reserch, some just seem to spout rubbish, but he is very no grey shades thinking. i have not even herd of some of those channels and have watched most of them.
@@ronald3836 THere is obviously a biological truth to lead poisoning, but it also has a political element that you might be unaware of. As an ex leftist, I can assure it is being spread to cover up some uncomfortable truths. Investiagte at your leisure.
Any bones examined from the area of Wales during Roman times would almost certainly contain a higher level of lead, as well as other heavy metals as Wales was almost completely under Roman control from 78 AD until 383 AD. The Romans were heavily invested in Wales primarily because it was a huge center for the mining of metal, primarily gold, copper, lead, zinc and silver. Any legionaires assigned to duty in this area would almost certainly show a higher level of heavier metals in thier remains.
Fascinating, I've always liked your academic approach because it gives me the chance to look into it myself and see that you're right and you always are, great work 🙂
Regarding the "lead poisoning" aspect - I'd like to hear your thoughts on the Roman use of sapa. I've seen this raised in other places online, where sapa is described as "lead sugar" created by "boiling unfermented grape juice in order to concentrate the natural sugars." Said boiling took place in lead alloy kettles. Was this wide-spread enough to have poised a significant health issue? Apparently, in Apicius' recipe book roughly a fifth of all recipes called for the use of "lead sugar."
I'd also like to hear a response to this.
If lead paint walls were banned within the past 100 years, I can assume "lead sugar" would be just as poisoning. Especially considering the culture of drinking they had.
Simon Whistler is the content creator who got me into TH-cam. So I have a bias "soft spot" for him. Yet, nobody is infallible. Metatron, I commend you for correcting the statements made by Simon (or rather, his writer). You played the ball and not the player. Well done Metatron. I truly wish that one day this sort of debate/correction/discourse will become the norm in society. I do feel however that I need to point something out of to those who do not know (in Simon's defence) : Simons is a presenter/narrator. Yes, he has an above average general knowledge and he is intelligent. But he is not a historrian (relating to this video). I don't think that his lack of specified knowledge and education should censor him or anybody like him. He raised fair questions. It takes academics to answer these questions. I truly believe that correspondence such as this reaction video is exactly what we need in this modern age : intellectual ideas vs. academic facts. This is how we boil down to the truth of matters.
I've been watching Simon for about 8 years. He has a team of writers do the research, and he just records videos, lol. That being said, I have noticed over the year inaccurate representations of different topics. Usually, it's either a popular misconception or myth, and I don't think it is intended to misinform. I just found this channel in the last couple of weeks and am in love with that cute pushy! 😍 I'm still getting to know Metatron but so far I'm enjoying the content 😁
This. And also Trump lives rent free in his head. It doesnt matter the topic, he also has to mention him :)
I was fine with his ignorance because he was so open about it, and very open about the fact that he was just the reader. Unfortunately, when he allows and goes along with one of his script writers to "respect the pronouns" of a male murderer of teenagers, I really lost my desire listen to Simon, regardless of how well he reads an interesting script.
I was just coming here to say something similar. With the amount of channels that he hosts, there's no way he has the time to research and write every single video he hosts. However, I have never seen him say it's a popular misconception or myth - he hosts as if he's giving the absolute truth. The subjects he talks about are interesting enough, but if I want an authentic take on any given subject he talks about, I'll research it myself
@@horizonzeromom 100% agreed! I take everything on his many channels with a grain of salt. I also know that some writers are more thorough with their research. I've seen the same topic covered on different channels written by different authors and the second author with actually present corrections to the earlier video. It's not often, but it shows that no one is perfect.
Used to love watching Simon, because his content was very objective and the subject matter was really interesting. For the past 3-5 years that has been changing however. Seems that his particular political leanings are affecting his content lately, or his writers political leanings. I haven't been interested in his content in over a year now
Hi love your channel, it's very informative. About lead poisoning considering lead additives to gasoline for years and lead paint that was used in many homes,that impacted health in our world.
Don't forget ammo for guns. Most ammunition to this day still uses primer that has lead in it and obviously the bullet is lead for most.. There seems to be a push for lead-free ammo, but progress has been slow and the lead-free alternatives don't always work for specific guns.
I appreciate how you opened the video, it set a good tone.
I honestly love the way you use language skill to debate a subject. and what i do love about you is that, im pretty sure, if you got something wrong you have the guts to apologize and rectify. Many can learn from you
interestingly the first time i heard of an "earth salting" was in reference to warfare in mesopotamian societies.
college my prof really pushed the idea of how brutal warfare got by mentioning how they would regularly salt the grounds.
now that you mention this makes me wonder how legit even that was
Salt was very valuable.
If gold would poison a field - would you sow it to destroy the field? No, of course not.
IMO this is just a fairy tale.
Maybe it origined in poisoning a water supply during a siege - which happened of course.
But salting the ground after having destroyed the enemy seems just absurd.
It did not get into the Bible for no reason. But probably it was mainly symbolic.
Generally I tend to interpret people talking about how "brutal" warfare in the distant past was as a massive red flag. It's wishful nonsense - no manner of warfare in history has ever been more brutal than that of our very modern present; to focus on the brutality of the ancients is to hypocritically ignore all the earth-shattering spasms of (frequently genocidal) violence so close to us, whether the world wars or the many far more recent conflicts that never attract a significant audience by the merit of occurring in third world countries
@@melanoc3tusii205 Yeah, It's a weird thing. People in modern times seem to intentionally vilify people who lived in the past. But... what they leave out is... many of those old wars, they destroyed the CULTURE of their enemy. not by killing them all, but by taking over and raising their children to live like the victors did. It's real different when instead of murdering the children.... you ADOPT them.
this was actually a rather common practice in many cultures too.
@@melanoc3tusii205 yeah, it's a safe bet that war has always been brutal, only the methods change, and it's pretty much a given, modern methods allow far more "creativity" in inflicting suffering than anything our ancestors had.
Does not seem particularly pragmatic to the earth. Especially, since salt was valuable enough to be used as currency. Then salting the earth would make as much sense as ploughing gold coins into the ground.
Was looking for someone to point this out! Salt was too valuable to just be scattered over ruins.
Exactly. The soldiers wouldn't willingly sacrifice their _salary_ just to stick it to the Carthagineans.
I don't see how it's any different from dropping a nuke. Nukes are expensive and make the land unusable as well.
How expensive was rising and maintaining an army nack then? How expensive was a war? How much did it pay off? How those compares with how it is today? Carthage was an economic rival very close to Roma's own level I dare to say. Killing their land with salt? was an investment.
@@williamalvarez9563
Except you don't "kill land with salt".
It just doesn't work, unless you have astronomical amounts of it, which would have been borderline impossible to acquire in those ancient times.
Fantastic video. Really went into detail and also a lot of nuance.
Saw this video from Simon some time ago. Was amazed at his brazen revisionism.
I was too.
Can you speak about the current political landscape and your opinion about the war expanding into a broader conflict?
💯
So one of the things that makes me wonder about the salting the eart thing. Salt was rather valuable, and how much of it would you need to render a city sized patch of ground infertile? And how long would that last anyway?
I hate to say it, but this is the first time I've really thought about it.
I thought that also. You'd be essentially throwing money away on an enemy's home.
I am sure they just flood the area with sea water.
I'm a big fan of your channel. Greetings from Venezuela
Was salting of the earth ever done historically, by anyone? Would be a pretty expensive undertaking in the ancient times.
Also, is it a war crime if war crimes didn't exist back then? Even using that term is presentism, isn't it?
Carthage was salted in our hearts, even if not in reality.
The term "war crime" is like "murder", both are literally legal definitions; and only really exist within that context.
Not in ancient history, at least.
I just salted my garden before answering, so yes, it's been done at least once by me.
The thing about warcrimes is they only exist if someone can enforce them.
Salting of the earth was a Semitic thing, along with genocide. Quick read of Deuteronomy or judges will show you that lol.
“Abimelech sealed his victory over the city of Shechem by sowing it with salt (Judg. 9:45)” apparently the practice was mostly common during the bronze age in the levant with mentions from the hittites and assyrians. But very uncommon outside of that.
Without even watching the video: everybody was extremely brutal and ruthless from ancient up to renaissance times. Because that meant survival.
That's pretty much every Simon's vid about old civs..
Same thing for slavery, no wonder that it was a phenomenon relevant to the whole world and in every time
Bruh thinks the Jews Christians and Muslims = everyone. Mainly only the people of these religions were barbaric. Nations not infected by any of these religions were much more civilized at the time. India, Indonesia, North America for example.
And the Romans were extraordinary.
Didn't plutach mention that when they made Gaius Gracchi go to Carthage to make a settlement they were greeted by bad omens and they couldn't grow crops etc., i can't really remember it well but i remember talking about it on class. Thanks for the great video!
Lead oxidizes when exposed to water much like copper does, that is, a hard outer layer shell forms. It does not precipitate and pit like iron does, and this type of oxidization is one reason why copper and lead were used as piping. They simply decayed less and lasted longer because the oxidized layer would protect the metal.
This also means that while detectable, the amount of pure lead leaching into water from a pipe is going to be miniscule after a time. I would imagine the bigger threat of contamination would be during the working process, including rain runoff from the work area.
As a plumber, I've always been interested in Rome's use of lead
I'm honestly kind of bummed that "salting the earth" is a myth. Because let's be honest, that's straight-up gangster.
Scorched earth but actually psychopathic
I know right?, having people across every street just sprinkling salt over people's corpses sounds cold blooded 😈
The ultimate expression of "No I don't think you understand, FUCK YOU AND YOUR LAND"
It’s not it is barbaric and immoral.
@@fij715good
Ok I love your channel , although I don’t think I’ve ever learned anything new, or at least major new stuff
I have read English translations of classic Roman histories and alot on the Punic wars.
However I never noticed that none recorded the sewing with salt story.
I learned it in elementary school in the 1960s .
Never gave it a thought that it was absent in the period sources
I can’t say I Knew it was absent until today
That’s why I watch channels like yours. All of a sudden you get a new insight you never had
History is never just ‘one damn fact after another’
It's simple they were both trying to wipe each other out. Rome was attacked multiple times by Carthage. What do you do when an enemy refuses to let you live, you're forced to take them out
Rome started it by expanding into Sicily!
@@claudiaxanderCarthage was far from Sicily while Rome was next to it!
I'm not sure but I thought it was the city in the middle that invited both countries and then the Romans just kicked out the Carthaginians and then the Carthaginians surrounded the city creating a battle that cause the war?
@@claudiaxanderRome didn’t start the war …
The Greek cities in Sicily and south Italy were powerful and always fought between each other ..
There were protectorate and the most powerful faction protect this complex system …
The two understand they were starting to expand in the same area “Mediterranean” and one must submit to the other …
Sicily was the bridge between them one need it to keep safe their possessions ( Rome ) , the other need it to have a safe location to eventually punish and keep at bay
@@bingingbinging8597 The western Sicily was a carthaginian province. (Lot of original Phoenician cities were there. For exmple modern day Palermo (Ziz/Panormus), or modern day Marsala (Motya/Lilybaeum).
Polybius writes though that Romans started to think about expeling the Carthaginians from Sicily only after the fall of Agrigentum.
As the guy responsible for autonomic management in the Simon Whistler units I feel uniquely qualified to chime in her. As many have noted, our Simon Whistler units have been very popular, many owners choosing to use them as presenters in TH-cam videos. We're not responsible for how owners program a unit, and customers are entirely responsible for what they have their units say. We'd recommend using your Simon as it was intended - construction work and as a pleasure bot.
Lol!
Mom says it’s my turn with the Simon Whistler pleasurebot.
And this is why metatrons are one of the best informative channels .Challenge the message praise the person and offer the hand of friendship
Hey Meta love the helm. Now my 20 year old wants one. He's a marine so I did buy him a 1640s English lobster helmet and 1500s Burgonet!
Parenting done right!
I believe when one talks of “genocide” or even “war atrocities” to ancient civilizations, it is most often the use of presentism. While we can be appalled by what ancient civilizations did during wartime and peacetime, we have to separate our modern values from the daily actions that were normal in ancient times. We cannot understand past civilizations through a modern lens, but only through their own words and what we know of them.
but we must also realize the wrongness of it by studying through the viewpoint of both neutral history and morality, or other understood as politics. We cannot rid understanding history of morality because than we cannot learn and progress. It being okay at the time does not excuse its wrongness, which if wrong should not be erased but showcased.
That also happens when examining future nations. They get too presentised.
My great grandmother hated black people, though she had barely ever met any, and this wasn't 2000 years ago, she lived until I was 5 months old, June 1971. But back then that was pretty normal and even more so in the 1910s and 20s when she was young and the Holocaust hadn't yet happened.
I think the rulers of the ancient world would nod with approval for our brutal 20th century regimes and we are well on our way to eclipsing our forefathers in slaughter!
Wiping out all the Pagan roots the Gaelic peoples had and stamping out all the druids is a good signifier of genocide.
I can’t speak to the specifics of Roman water however as a water treatment operator, the ph and alkalinity of the water source influence the level of contamination. The harder the water and higher the ph of the water, the less electro chemical reaction between the water and lead.
In regards to present day lead pipes, they currently use phosphates and orthophosphates to sequester lead in existing pipes. They also can add chemicals like lime {Ca(OH)2} to increase the ph and alkalinity of the water to decreases lead contamination.
Also, from what I have heard, lime was a primary ingredient in Roman concrete and was what helped it last so long. It so, they were actively using a lead mitigation technique that is used today.
@@buc4415
excellent post. i seem to
recall that the concrete
was volcanic ash and
lime, but they didn't
mention that you
put the lime in
the coconut
'n call me
in the
Mor-
ning
:D
I’ve started hitting “don’t recommend channel” whenever Simon’s channels pop into my recommends. Unlike Metatron, Crecganford, etc., he’s more of a mouthpiece than a creator with a personal connection to the content, and that shows in these errors.
Facts.
Every now and then a title and thumbnail will get me to click his videos but I'm almost always disappointed
Yup. I've been doing this for many years though. Every now and again, his ugly mug appears on a new channel and then I instantly click don't recommend
Same.
Simon is also honest enough to change his mind. Recounting the actions of criminals in his "Casual Criminalist" has led him to no longer oppose the death penalty and support it in some cases.
I'm glad you mentioned the "history " of violence between Carthage and Roman cultures
I like his content. I get a general over view on lots of different topics and then I can do more research from there.
I guess this whole Salting of Carthage spiel is just one of those historic blunders that refuses to go away, even I vividly remember learning about it in my high school history class. And thank you for having the uncomfortable but necessary conversation about genocide, in this day and age where very serious allegations are being thrown about willy-nilly, they start losing meaning, so it's very important to use words for their proper meaning and not devalue them.
Kind of like the Aztec spiel that said they were blood hungry and practised mass sacrifice for their 'gods' , which the word gods in nahuatl doesn't even exist. 🤣. Our Neoh Liberal History classes provide many historical blunders that want go away.
Well it probably had something to do with the child sacrifice elements of Carthage society, they worship Baal from the Old Testament and sacrifice plays heavy in their religion. Rome was disgusted by this practice that it could’ve been said they destroyed Carthage in propaganda to the Roman Public to glorify their great victory, or alternatively it actually happened because shit none of us were there.
Salting is prob a mistranslation or misunderstanding of a phrase or Roman meme. We say 'salt of the Earth'
@@sercravenmohead3631 Hannibal traumatized the Romans, and he made that fatal mistake, he ignored his lieutenant who advised an immediate march on Rome after Cannae.
Cato the elder later was adamant, Carthage must die.
Carthago Delenda Est!
The story I was taught in school was that the upper classes in ancient Rome were exposed to large amounts of lead in the wine. I don't remember the details, but it was something to do with a sweetener they added to the wine. Allegedly, that contributed to the psychotic behavior of their leaders. Assuming this is true, it still means most of the Romans were NOT poisoned by lead in their wine. Because only the upper classes could afford to drink wine on a regular basis.
The drink was called Grappa and it was made by heating up wine in a lead pot. Only a small amount of lead would’ve been transferred into the drink. It would’ve been hazardous by modern standards. But to actually get neurological damage you’d need to drink it fairly often, like once a day. People were probably only drinking it once a month at most. Lead is bad for adults but it’s worst for children, and kids wouldn’t have been drinking it.
You're talking about lead sugar. I've read about this, too. Worth looking up.
The ancient theory of saturnism created by lead in the pipes. It has been debunked already by years.
They added honey, the beverage was called mulsum. I don't know why they would teach you about lead poisoning when this was never proved.
I doubt it was even the case with the upper classes. Modern propaganda most likely. It’s ironic because we get more exposed to toxins than the Roman’s ever did
This video is extremely helpful for a history lover like me. All of us without exception want to be proud of and romanticize our past history, but we need to acknowledge that we also made careless and even careful mistakes that we need to learn from and not repeat them.
I'd be careful about that if I were you. Using a nation's history to define the politics of the present has taken many nations down some very dark paths indeed.
@nicktecky55 it's like utopian progressives, only its utopian conservatism. We look at the past a feel so connected to what we think the past was ... alas still plag
@@4h844 "utopian progressives" like who and what is their "utopia"?
That is a very unusual assertion, that "all of us without exception" wish to revel in a romantic past. That is simply not true, my friend, there are many, _many_ who would rather leave the past behind and who strive for a greater, ideologically dissimilar future
@@page8301 Presumably they are referring to (woefully) popular takes on socialism or even social democracy, wherein it is imagined that the entire left can be summed up as being ideologically bent on "free stuff" and "handouts", as if the working class doesn't produce everything itself. I don't mean to speak for them of course, but I am reminded of the misconception that individuals like Marx were Utopian idealists, when of course such individuals were explicitly anti-utopian and thoroughly materialist
I'm really happy I found your channel. I dig your content a lot and you seem like a really chill dude.
As a big Whistler fan, I appreciate how you both are so respectful towards one another. (Well I haven't seen Simon post any form of response, maybe he did, but i agree he would be humble enough to accept being wrong, or respectfully disagree as you do). Even to the point of linking original video in the description. (Unless its a copywriting issue hahah but i still feel you have the integrity to do so regardless). Apologies for my grammar
Same here
He doesn’t really do response videos.
He’s admitted on several occasions that despite his broad general knowledge from doing so many videos, he doesn’t remember all of them. Mostly because he’s a presenter of scripts, not the writer which is how he can keep up the content grind.
Imagine wasting literal TONS of valuable salt and the logistical nightmare of transporting all that salt and the actual salting of the fields.
Then imagine it all washing away the first time it rains.
@@OutsiderLabsand then the remaining salt solidified and then that is the salt we see in what used to be Carthage today!
I rate Simon's reliability as unreliable
Oooooooo! A response video to one of Simon's videos! I love his content. I realize that doesn't make him inerrant, though. Also, I haven't watched that particular video, so I'm gonna go do that first, then come back to your's.
Rome wasn't more brutal than others. It was more organized.
Other people at the time did not commit genocide or made men kill each other for the amusement of people or let slave girls be raped by baboons 4:33 in front of thousands of cheering people.
These people were barbarians.
@@fij715 The treatment of slaves was horrific. The fall of the Hellenic states was a tragedy for humanity.
@@fij715Other people of the time sacrificed babies by throwing them into fire. That's certainly no better than raping someone.
@@fij715 To be fair, yes, other people at the time did commit these things. They simply did not have the means to carry it out on the same scale as the romans.
Now, one can also wonder why the Romans, who considered themselves to be the absolute height of civilization (which they undoubtedly were for the time) and viewed all other people as inferior, continued to indulge in recreational violence until the point Christianity put an end to it, despite the influence of Greek philosophy and "humanistic" ideals.
@@remilenoir1271 Greeks were also warlike, tyrannical, brutal, greedy, corruptible, genocidal and practiced slavery.
Also, salting the ground don't stop the growth of crops Forever in any way. I mean, for example, every year during Winter the roads are salted but every spring the grass Is there.
Well electrolytes are what plants crave.
I remember the claim not being that the entire Roman populace was crazy from the lead poisoning, but that the roman elite was Particularly affected Due to them having the most access to lead cutlery cups, cutlery, and pipes.
I mean the main point is actually that lead poisoning or elevated levels of lead do not lead people to become psychopaths. It leads to health problems and a lower intellect.
I find it so funny people look down on them when something like 1/3 of our population is on rare earth metals/SSRIs that are very badly understood.
The only Roman Emperor I ever read about that was considered driven nuts by possible lead poisoning was Caligula. For the life of me I can't remember where I read or saw it. It was a semi documented decline into madness, to the point he sent soldiers to attack Poseidon by smacking the water with swords.
My father said he chewed on lead fishing sinkers as a kid. He could be kind of a jerk, but I wouldn't call him a psychopath.
You left out the lead acetate they added to their wine.
Very good video; very informative. The many points you bring up to counter or give a more overall balanced 'picture' of this subject, shows considerable research on your part.
Simon made a video about Japan's unit 731 (well made, I really enjoyed it) and he is really calling the Romans psychopaths and brutal? It's absurd
Why is it absurd? Wiping out/enslaving 2/3 of the population of Gaul IS brutal, there is no denying that. Nowhere did Simon ever say that the Japanese in unit 731 were NOT brutal or less brutal than the Romans.
Why can't both be brutal? Since they are. You seem to suggest that only the most brutal can be called brutal and all else thus isn't brutal?
@@Glo0ze You also need to consider the different time periods. Killing, conquering and enslaving was the norm in the ancient world, if you don't do that someone else will do that to you, tere's simply no choice if you want to survive.
But making the kind of experiments on humans that the Japanese did in the 40s is plain crazy and sadistic, there's no need for that to win a war.
That's why I would call the Japanese unit 731 brutal but not the Romans
The biggest problem when people get history wrong is that they don't believe the human factor is a constant and think culture dictates how humans think or feel about anything.
So if they think a culture "normalized" violence, they imagine everybody living under said culture had no problem brutalizing or murdering each other without thought or care. But if you believe there is something about human nature that is constant, it doesn't take a lot to realize such a characterization of an entire culture can only be a massive exaggeration.
Facts! The human factor as in the psychology of humanity hasn’t changed.
I usually agree with you, but I have to say that there is nothing so outlandish that it could be attributed to Rome and I find myself disbelieving it. While I agree that lead in the water is unlikely to be the cause of the Ancient Romans being psychopaths... removing lead as an excuse leaves you with a group of people who were psychopaths without an explanation, other than they enjoyed violence and gore... preferably (apparently) when inflicted upon others my themselves. That's not so far off from psychopaths.
Simon has a bunch of staff that do the research. He just reads the script. Love his channels... i dont' hold him to task, other than need to hire better researchers, maybe hire extras to vet the research?
I worked with a guy at Lockheed, who had a theory.
The theory was: the fall of the Roman Empire was cause by indoor plumbing.
That is, they went somewhat insane due to the lead pipes used in Roman houses and buildings. He said that to me back in March of 2000.
Edit: I also read some time ago that Ivan the Terrible was afflicted with lead poisoning, which was what made him so terrible as to murder his own beloved son.
didnt we ourself use lead pipes till 1970ish? and italy has quite hard water, especially the rome region which would qickly build a passivation layer inside the pipe.
i read somewhere that it was syphilis that made ivan so erraticly insane but it might have been all, mentally cracked from the start+lead+syphilis+hokey medicin of the time=ivan the terrible
@@BruderSenf yea, we did use lead piping. I believe some old houses still have them and changing the pipes is a requirement if the property is sold.
It might have been syphilis. I thought I had read it was lead, but it also could have been a combo of things that made Ivan go nuts. Crazy Ivan literally, not just clearing your baffles.
20 years studying it and I still get surprised. I confess that the NOT salting of the earth is new to me.
Oh wow this video is so exciting for me I really like you Metatron and Simon as creators I respect your work, this video should be great!
I like how all these "most controversial" and "hotly debated" theories are only as such among civilians and pop- or pseudo-historians 😂😂😂
Often the views of the average person are more representative of reality since they're getting things from older research which is less biased in some areas and not as subject to modern political pressure. You see all of the humanities promote esoteric readings and modern framing of oppression. You also see child sacrifice and other practices dismissed or down played because the accusers were Christian/Jewish.
Exactly
I regard such videos as a satire on wokism.
@@TheThreatenedSwan The views of the average person are not more representative of reality. They often get their information from sensationalized videos that are poorly researched, devoid of context and heavily influenced by modern political and societal perspectives. Just scroll through the comment section for examples of this.
@@jacquesstrapp3219 The wonderful world of internet articles like "Atilla the Hun was Based AF."
A shame I like Simon's videos, but I can never tell if they're accurate but is nice to know he responds well. I like his persona and the way he does narrates his videos.
I never anything in his videos i didnt already know.
What I learned about history is that there's a both side of the coin History is written by the winners and there's always a reason to justify war Thanks for the information sir
Here's an idea for a video:
Make one of those ranking lists where you rank the different soldier classes (archers, crossbowmen, pikemen, swordsmen, knights, other cavalry etc.) by how safe or how likely they were to survive an average, pitched battle. And you explain why you chose what you chose as you go down the list.
Very interesting,as usual. Good clarification. I always believed the thing about the lead poisoning. As you explained it so clearly, we were all still using it until recent times. We're not raving lunatics, well maybe some. Thank you once again Metatron.
In Ancient Rome, only the rich would have had lead pipes. The bulk of the distribution of water is bound to have been made by cost effective materials. So the larger diameter pipes would not be made of lead, but of clay,, and stone. Lead is expensive, and only used when we start to look at individual villas and houses, and only the wealthy would have been able to afford it. So any lead poisoning would be confined to the top echelon. Additionally, many romans would take care of most of their H2O requirements by drinking wine, not water. Water was used for hygiene, bathing, and washing away fecal matter in the many public toilets. So i don´t see how lead would have ever been this massive health problem.
Crime rates have gone down globally since we stopped using leaded gasoline. I think there is no definitive proof of causality, but this is not something that can be dismissed as a hypothesis. And Simon makes clear it is just that.
Roman skeletons do have huge amounts of lead. I can't believe that Metatron just tries to explain that away. Too easy.
The gasoline thing is very real! Also, we are still using lead pipes lmao. At least in America most pipes are made out of lead. I'm talking about the lines that connect to homes, the pipes technically owned by the government or water company (depends on where you live). It's so bad we don't even know the extent of it. And no places in the US are interested in figuring it out because it would cost so much.
@@wmd40 One interesting thing I've seen, and possibly more important than the pipes... is that Romans did also use Lead for tableware. AFAIK, it was seen as something mainly for the wealthy. But more so... lead as a drinking vessel, bowl or plate, some kinds of food will corrode the lead slightly... and whoever eats the food gets a far higher dose of lead than if it had been water.
'cause, well.... Lead is insoluable in water. that's why it got used in pipes so much. Pure water does not corrode Lead. now if the water has stuff like Carbonic acid well... maybe that might dissolve some Lead, but the water itself will not.
@@ronald3836 or its not being reported