Recent comments in /f/history

Farinthoughts t1_iwbvnld wrote

Reply to comment by milkmamasilk in Gravestones were used by the people to build houses by ValdisPunk

I saw a documentary once where they were talking about how after WWII and the liberation of the concentration camps, when they were demolishing them - locals would come in and take the building materials (bricks and such) and build houses out of them.

"authorities noted that locals had dismantled most of the remaining camp buildings, reusing parts of them in their own houses."

Edit : Sobibor

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pgm123 t1_iwbuxbr wrote

Reply to comment by Zigazig_ahhhh in Slaves were brutally branded in ancient Egypt, research shows by Rear-gunner

>So there's no actual evidence

The actual evidence is that texts say enslaved people were marked. It cites arguments that tattooing in Egypt was religious (so less likely for slaves) and the branding irons appearing to be better fitted for humans. But the primary evidence is the fact that enslaved people were marked.

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pgm123 t1_iwbukw8 wrote

Reply to comment by someterriblethrills in Slaves were brutally branded in ancient Egypt, research shows by Rear-gunner

>A strange quantifier in the title. I can't think of a way to brand a living creature that isn't brutal.

I was thinking the same thing. It's brutal and cruel. For some reason, adding the qualifier brutal has the unintentional effect of making it seem like there are instances of branding that isn't brutal?

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Kelmon80 t1_iwbrg2z wrote

Reply to comment by Rear-gunner in Slaves were brutally branded in ancient Egypt, research shows by Rear-gunner

Iron was a rare, expensive resource back then, and likely a huge investment for an ancient Egyptian farmer (or slave merchant, for that matter). But i fail to see why you can't brand cattle with some iron that's smaller than whatever is in use today. Even a finger-sized branding in the right position would still do its job: Differentiating who's cattle belongs to whom, even if it takes longer to figure out.

I mean, I'm not saying it couldn't have been used for slaves, but that's a huge assumption to make just based on size.

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metropitan t1_iwbre4k wrote

Reply to Slaves were brutally branded in ancient Egypt, research shows by Rear-gunner

it is weird to think that slavery being considered wrong (within larger social consciousness) only really came about in the last 300 years or so, and even then for a while the empires that profited the most off the trade, Britan, France had to spend the next 100 years or so still fighting against it, and even now an illegal slave trade exists, including places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar who have workers so impoverished and underpaid they may as well be slaves

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someterriblethrills t1_iwbqgr5 wrote

Reply to comment by BlueThunderFlik in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

Thomas Jefferson argued that every generation (which he decided was 19 years) should get their own constitution.

We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another… On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.

Source

Not quite what you were asking since he's not really assigning characteristics to each generation, but it's interesting that he wanted a legal system based on the idea.

This was in a letter to James Madison. I don't have time to find Madison's reply rn but from what I remember it was something along the lines of "You're a fucking idiot, never try to talk about this to me again."

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