#learn tribal languages

[sparky-cryptidcrafts]

Someone tried to act like I'm not allowed to call myself mixed bc I don't speak Spanish.

Both English and Spanish are colonizer languages. The one you speak is a byproduct of what kind of misson/residential school/ church your ancestors were abused by. Nothing more, speaking Spanish isn't a badge of honor to hold over your cousins heads just bc your part of the family wasn't displaced as quickly.

Being mixed also doesn't negate someone's lived experiences and culture. Neither does being a victim of cultural erasure/poverty and trying to reconnect.

Blood quantum is another tool that only aids cultural erasure.

I'm living in and working to help native communities, my own and others. I'm going to protests and powwows, I'm helping my friends club at their college to raise awareness for indigenous issues, I'm attempting to learn at least a little in my tribes and my friend's tribe's languages, as well as reconnect to my Scottish ancestors too.

I grew up homeless I had very little access to anything remotely cultural. Nearly all my energy was on finding something to eat and somewhere to sleep. Poverty in america is designed to erase culture. Having a community and reconnecting brought me stability and gave me a chance to learn and be apart of things. So sorry I didn't learn more Spanish, I might one day, but I'm going to learn tribal languages first.

And to any native or Mexican kids out there struggling to learn their languages with limited resources and limited access to reservations or elders, I see you, every word you learn is power you are reclaiming from the colonizers. Every syllable, every symbol, every word is rebellion, and I'm proud of you. Even if you only know one word, that's one word refusing to be forgotten, one small act of defiance they can't take from you again. Keep fighting.

#mixed kids #indigenous kids #indigenous languages #blood quantum sucks #Spanish is a colonizer language #english is a colonizer language #learn tribal languages #mexican are indigenous #everyone is indigenous somewhere #white isnt a culture its the erasure of culture #love your ancestors #speak to your ancestors #keeping mixed kids from reconnecting aids in cultural erasure and genocide

[wiisagi-maiingan]

I know I've talked about the issues with indigenous languages and their inaccessibility for people from their cultures and how easily outsiders learning those languages can become disrespectful and even colonialist

but if Duolingo started offering Anishinaabemowin courses (made by actual Anishinaabe speakers and educators who are WELL COMPENSATED and TREATED FAIRLY), I would be on that shit in a fucking heartbeat.

#i know that there are courses online but #1) i'm poor #2) a lot of free ones are restricted to enrolled tribal members #and 3) i'm a flavor of brainweird that makes learning languages very difficult and not at all intuitive for me

[backpackingspace]

okay obviously hau cheng is like prime character to be covered in tattoos but have we considered xie lian with tattoos??? Because I cannot stop thinking about it

#heaven official's blessing #Tgcf #Hua cheng #Xie lian #Tattoos #Hua cheng obviously has his xie lian tattoo but #I think that's it just the one #Or alternatively xie lians name in every language of where he's looked for his god #Xie lian though post Canon who has never been able to keep any scar ever who's body looks exactly like it did at 17 #Xie lian who's never had proof of all he's suffered except for his memories #Xie lian who's never felt safer than when he's surrounded by hua cheng xie lian who loves his husband's art #Asks for a tattoo asks his San Lang to do it #And it takes time to make ink that'll stay but if hua cheng has to invent new ink for his husband's happiness than it's easy #And once xie lian has one? He loves it he never wants to stop his body quickly fills with his husband's ink #Idk what tattoos xie lian has but maybe some sort of tribal band around his neck? Or a band of butterflies 👀 #A Phoenix? A dragon? All the moments he met San Lang? #Ohhh a big one over his back of a child falling and then the child growing and catching him #The flowers hua cheng use to give him around his ankle #A series down his thigh that use to be his mother's favorites #I think Feng xin would hate it at first until xie lian explained and then he'd just be sad about it #Mu Qing is.....complicated like always #Lang qiunqui....is NOT curious he doesn't want one he isn't dying to know if xie lian has one of his time as his teacher or not #Eventually he asks xie lian if hua cheng will give him one as well and the answer is of course no but maybe.... #....xie lian learns how to give tattoos 👀 the idea is surprisingly popular with the gods

[akayv]

This ain't directed at anybody's specific because I've seen it multiple times over the years but I find it really interesting how quick reconnecting Cherokee are to complain about the resources we have available to them. Idk like.

Y'all don't even speak our language and you're bitching - why would I even want you in our spaces at that point?

#'there's no Eastern resources!' #one. if you would look around yes there are #two. we are a western band - what are you expecting of us? #three. if you would pay 5 seconds of attention to the language you would realize that the dialect is not always super distinct #and that you should just fucking learn #im mad #but our elders - language speakers - are actual connected tribal members put work into this shit #who the fuck are y'all

[vi-visected]

.

#tag ranting don’t mind me #i love being able to speak english the way that i do #i love that i feel like i have a very firm yet abstract grasp on the language #and that i can manipulate it to mean what i want and have other people read it the way i envision it #i’m very proud of my mastery of the english language #but sometimes i have to wonder if i’m not compensating for the fact that i don’t speak anishinaabemowin #if i feel like speaking english exceptionally well will balance out the fact that i can’t speak my tribal language #i have to wonder if this is just a way for me to cope with the fact that i never got to learn #i have to wonder if i communicate so thoroughly this way because i was meant to communicate in another and the fact that it’s missing #leaves a space that i crave to fill in any way that i can #i love being able to express myself so well in english #but sometimes i wonder if i’d be just as happy had i been given the chance to express myself otherwise

[jewish-vents]

I am about ready to scream at goyim going "imagine if a country that was mostly one religion committed genocide other than Israel! imagine any other country being that awful!" I AM JEWISH AND CHOCTAW. My people have been massacred, forced off our land, raped, beaten, killed, death marched down to Oklahoma, forced into residential schools, been denied tribal membership and access to the reservation (and our own fucking culture) for being too light-skinned, Christians came in and beat and killed and raped everyone trying to practice our ancestral religion, Christian charity was contingent on you being willing to go along with Christianity, the government that has its' boot on our neck to this day is Christian, and goyim really want to act like NO ONE religious has ever done anything bad other than (((some people)))?! Choctaw women are STILL raped and beaten by police at four times the rate of white people and you know what the dominant religion in the state it's being done is? Hint, it's not Judaism!

Do you know why my ancestors converted, goyim? It's because the only people who ever offered them any kindness or support who weren't asking them to give up their language, culture and way of life were Jewish. The only people who agreed being forced off of your land and death marched to Oklahoma was fucked up were Jewish people. The only one who would let my great-great-great-great grandfather work for an honest day's pay and pay him the same amount they would a white person was a Jewish man. When white people wanted to take my great-great-great grandfather and his sister and put them in an Evangelical school to indoctrinate and mistreat them, it was a Jewish woman who straight up lied to them and went, "oh they're not Native, they're my kids, actually! no need to take them anywhere, they're not Native, they're white, the father of my bastards is just tan from working outside a lot!" and thus kept them out of there. They converted because they saw the love of G-d and it sure as shit wasn't from Christians!

And people see me and they think, "oh, he's not white, so he must not be Jewish. I can say antisemitic shit in front of him" and it makes me want to go fucking feral. Do they think I just forgot why my ass is in Oklahoma and why I can speak English and Yiddish and not fluent Choctaw? Do they think I forgot who gave my family a plot of land to live on when my ancestors were declared too light skinned to be allowed to live on the reservation while also not being able to return home because white Christians had built a town atop the ruins of my people's land? Because it wasn't you, Karen. You would have been saying Native kids were better off at a residential school and we both know it! We know it because you're fine hating a minority if you just have something you can spin into an excuse and you're fine dehumanizing people if the opportunity presents itself. "Imagine if any other religion-" I don't have to imagine. I'm in Okla-fucking-homa, Karen!

I've been observant all my life but this has switched it from 'lazily observant' to 'digging my heels in and being as Jewish as humanly possible' for the same reason I work my ass off learning Choctaw despite the obstacles: white goyim do not own me and I do not owe it to them to conform to their culture and expectations.

Am Yisrael Chai Akostininchi li Yisrael

(yes I know how to say it in Choctaw, my parents embedded that in my psyche, even if the rest of our knowledge of the language is spotty)

.

#jewish vents #antisemitism #genocide tw #american his #anti-native racism #Choctaw

[dailyadventureprompts]

Hi! I really like your other takes on Underdark races, and wanted to ask if you had any thoughts on improving grimlocks? Beyond the permanent blindness they have and the whole being humans who adapted to the underdark, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot else done with them.

Monsters Reimagined: Grimlocks

Would it surprise anyone to learn that a d-list d&d monster has It's roots in 1800s ideas about eugenics and bad adaptations of genre fiction? No? Then you've been paying attention, top marks.

Asker is absolutely right in their assessment that there's not really much to grimlocks. They're one of many "hostile tribal primitives" that have filled out the monster roster ever since the original developers lifted them en mass from the pulp adventure stories they grew up reading.

A common theme among these pulp works and the early scifi that inspired it was devolution, the idea that a people could degrade from greatness back into an animistic nature. The most well known pop culture example would be HP lovecraft's deep ones, where the author's fears of race mixing manifest as monsters that literally push humanity back down the evolutionary ladder to the stage of fish.

There's plenty of different ways to explain the origin of this writing trend, but I like to chalk it up to an anxiety resulting from the widespread acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution by a society that believed wholeheartedly in scientific racism. If intelligence (read: whiteness) wasn't just a god given right but was infact inheritable, then it could also be disinherited, bred out of a population whether by on purpose or by accident. This made it so important to practice good breeding (read: eugenics), to preserve the pure stock from falling to degeneracy (read: miscegenation) and introducing undesirable traits into the genepool.

We can see fear this with grimlocks, humanoids who were inherently lessened by their "adaptation" to life underground, losing their intelligence and eyesight and descending into a state of barbarism. Given that this is one of the few d&d monsters that mention evolution at all, we can trace this feature to their likely inspiration: The morlocks in H.G. Wells' Time machine, published a scant 36 years after Darwin published The Origin of Species.

I'm not well read enough to know whether Wells pioneered the idea of subhuman descendants, but I can say that most of his imitators missed the point of his writing: Wells saw in his day an increasingly indolent upper class inflicting brutal and dehumanizing labour conditions on the poor to support their own carefree lifestyle. He satirized this in his book by showing that while the descendants of the rich had devolved into beautiful, useless, idiots, the descendants of the workers devolved into subterranean ape-things who maintained the machinery that allowed the eden like existence of the rich while farming them for meat. Say what you will about Wells' race politics (Neither degenerate fop or inbred ape can withstand the smarts and strength of the enlightened colonial Englishman) but his writing was specifically class continuous, and the brutality of the morlocks was a direct result of the exploitation of working people in his own day and age.

When the morlocks were adapted into the grimlocks , the d&d writers kept their canibalistic streak but specifically removed their class based origins as well as their mechanical knowhow. This is a near identical process to what happened with a creature the worlocks helped inspire: Tolkien's orcs, which were likewise turned from a commentary on the brutality of the industrial age into warlike primitives. It's a bit of a trend.

If you wanted to "fix" the grimlocks I'd go one of two ways:

If you want to engage with themes of primality, make them legit underdark dwelling primates/australopithecus type of creatures, just figuring out tool use and language. Make the rumours of them being descended from cave-exploring humanoids a common myth made up by surface dwellers.

If you want to get spicy about it though, give them back their mechanical aptitude and maybe mix in a few more dashes of pulp "lost civilization" ancient aliens nonsense. Have them dwell in great mechanical complexes beneath the earth, worker drones who've long outlived the creatures that enslaved them and scribed mechanical knowledge into their very being. Originally denied understanding of the machines they toiled to build, work, and maintain, the grimlocks jealously guard the science they've spent generations reverse engineering, giving them the reputation of being violently territorial for those underdark travelers who venture too close to the megastructures they inhabit.

Artsource

#monsters reimagined #grimlocks #the orc dissertation #underdark #dnd #dungeons and dragons #d&d #ttprg #pathfinder

[linguisticdiscovery]

Chitimacha

Chitimacha is a Native American language of Louisiana that was spoken until the death of its last two native speakers, Ben (1934) & Delphine (1940), pictured here.

Thankfully, a linguist named Morris Swadesh (pictured) worked with Ben & Delphine to write down 120 Chitimacha stories and create a basic dictionary before they died.

Today, the Chitimacha tribe is revitalizing their language using those archival materials. They’ve created Rosetta Stone language learning software for Chitimacha, have daily language and culture classes in the tribal school, and have put up bilingual English-Chitimacha signs in many places.

Last week, I visited the Chitimacha reservation to run a workshop for the language teachers. We practiced many different pronunciation and grammar details, but also coined many new words! Here are a few we came up with:

Neymank Waxta ‘Indigenous Peoples Day’ (literally ‘people of the land’s day')

gaspam ‘refrigerator’ (literally ‘thing that causes it to be cold’)

pexpa patsi ‘volleyball’ = pexpa ‘cause to fly’ + patsi ‘ball’

huuta qapx kudihn ‘kayak’ (literally ‘boat closed in on itself’)

Chitimacha has a unique spelling system:

⟨b, d, g, dz, j⟩ are ejective consonants /pʼ, tʼ, kʼ, t͡sʼ, t͡ʃʼ/

⟨q⟩ is a glottal stop /ʔ/

⟨x⟩ is the palato-alveolar fricative /ʃ/

You can read more about the Chitimacha language in my forthcoming book chapter, available here:

#Chitimacha #linguistics #language #lingblr #langblr #Native American #Louisiana #Indigenous #Native

[markrosewater]

Ok, so, now that Kindred is finally out in the public, can we stop calling them typal decks? My biggest problem with the change from tribal was the confusion caused by a made up word. Sounds too much like mtg lingo instead of an actual thing. And I figure it was the same for a good amount of people like me that have problems with certain learning disabilities. With Kindred and tribal, they are real words that denote that something is part of something bigger. Typal just sounds like you could be playing a deck around cards of the same type, like artifacts, maybe (mine and a couple other people I know had this reaction)

Typal is a real word, not made up. It means "serve as a type" or "related to a type". Tribal meant two different things that caused confusion (including many times on this blog). It was both a card type and an adjective describing themes built around creature types.

As we had to change the word, we let each definition get its own word. Kindred is now the card type and typal is now the adjective.

You are free to use whatever words you like, but this is how we in R&D talk about them, and the language I'll use here on my blog.

[tac-the-unseen]

COD Random character quirks

Fluff

Ghost:

•Remembers every story somebody tells him, but can't remember where he left his sweater

•Bites the inside of his cheek constantly, to the point of scarring

•If somebody doesn't drag him out of the house he would never leave. Despite this he does love going on a walk from time to time

•Hates talking about his past and will always redirect the conversation

•Extremely fast eater, it's a combination of Trauma and military training. Can finish a whole plate in less than 10 minutes

•Pauses for a long time in between speaking but can't stand it if someone else does the same

Soap:

•Obsessed with swords, but is terrible at wielding them

•Screams “DON'T GO IN THERE!” to the T.V when watching any horror movie

•Wears the ‘I <3 my hot S/O’ shirts unironically, and the loves them because “It's true!”

•Loves to be the best at everything

•Consistently orders the same thing at a restaurant. Has a specific order for every restaurant he goes too

•Learned some magic tricks as a kid and can still do most of them

Price:

•Wears crazy socks, think Spencer and his friend Socko (from iCarly)

•Laughs to jokes no one else laughs at to make the other person not feel bad

•Has one nipple piercing on his left nipple, He doesn't want to get the second one and just likes having the ones.

•Overly Humble, You have to fight him to take a compliment

•Eats while driving and has made adjustments in his car to be able to eat with full effect

•Knows a surprising amount of useless trivia and will bring it up in any conversation he can

Alejandro:

•Screams and runs at the sight of the bee

•Notorious for his eye rolling abilities

•Has a pretty sizable jewelry collection. Necklaces, bracelets, earrings, rings, and brooches (and he's willing to share)

•Frequently complements his S/O

•Steals food off of his S/O’s and friends plate

•Great cook and spends most of his time around/in the kitchen

Gaz:

•Secretly wants to be in a boy band

•Can't swallow pills normally

•Make fake scenarios in his head about him being the ultimate hero

•Snorts when he laughs

•Eats healthy snacks and playful shames others for eating unhealthy snacks

•Surprisingly good at impressions specifically impressions of British government officials

Roach:

•Sneak attack hugger

•His all-time favorite book is Dr Seuss's ‘Put me in a zoo’

•Sometimes forget other people don't know sign language/can't read it that fast and signs so fast that others have no clue what he said

•Gets a bad case of the giggles when someone trips (He cannot stop no matter how hard he tries)

•Likes to eat in private and feels weird looking at other people eat (Not a fan of restaurants or Mukbang asmr)

•Squirms in his seat/Can sit still for that long

Konig:

•Wears a bunch of hair ties around his wrist

•Has to spend hundreds of dollars making custom shoes that actually fit him

•Is an adrenaline junkie on the battle field. He lives for the blood rush

•Has a house shaking laugh and Horangi makes fun of him for it

•Is a very neat eater, he's not overly delicate with his food but just likes to eat in a certain way

•Likes stretching out and popping his joints all the time.

Rudy:

•Sits on the floor rather than the couch

•Will politely remind you how good he's being in the midst of chaos

•Always supports/Roots for the underdog

•Always has Snacks in his pockets/backpack

•Messy eater, somehow always ends up with sauce on his shirt or crumbs in his pockets

•Lean onto the people closest to him

Mace:

•Puts hot sauce on everything

•Tells jokes with a serious face

•Always looking for new adventure, loves exploring, hiking, climbing, and learning about different cultures

•Frequently adjusting his shirt to show off his body modification (traditional tribal scars)

•Likes to eat food with his hand more than with utensils. He'll use forks, spoons, and knives when at restaurants, but when he's at home everything is finger food.

•Gets spontaneous piercing / tattoos

#simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #john price #alejandro vargas #rudy parra #kyle gaz garrick #gary roach sanderson #könig #mace cod #cod mw2 #mw2 #cod #fluff #sfw #Reader #x reader

[wiisagi-maiingan]

I have to like. Constantly remind myself that there is no possible way to respond to pretendian accusations because there is nothing I, or anyone else accused, can say that will make people respect me as a Native person, especially when 99.99% of those accusations online actually stem from other interpersonal drama. Can't make someone look bad enough for something else so why not toss racefaking accusations on top of it?

But it doesn't fucking matter because I have bared my heart and soul about the traumas and horrors my family has gone through, I have been MORE than open about my family and tribe in ways that honestly were not safe for me, I've been honest about my struggles with reconnecting and enrollment and feeling like an invader in my own culture, and I've been spending the last few months talking about enrolling and learning my language. I closed my inbox so that people would stop treating me like an authority on things I'm still trying to learn and understand myself. And it's not good enough for people who do not like me as a person.

I could post my family records. I could give the names of my family living on the rez, I could post pictures of my great-grandma's tribal card and my grandpa's tribal card and my mom's when she gets it and mine when I enroll, I could straight up fucking dox myself and it would not matter.

Because it's not about pretendians or race faking or anything like that, it's about weaponizing whatever you can against the people you don't like, to push them out of communities and isolate them from their own cultures. It's about using specific accusations that no one can question or argue against without coming off as a villain or loves red-face.

And this isn't just about me, obviously, it's about the ways that these accusations are lobbed against any Native person online who dares get on someone's bad side and the ways that many other Native people actively encourage it and partake in those witch hunts, fully confident that it'll never be turned against them. . . . . . Until it is.

Anyway, seeing that post and (ill advisedly) looking at the tags set off my anxiety and paranoia like nothing else but this little rant helped a lot by replacing that with anger. I know who I am. I don't need the validation of strangers and my identity is not dependent on their approval. They are literally nothing in my life and even giving them this is more than they deserve.

Hope everyone has a lovely fucking evening.

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

SO WHAT'S THE REAL DEAL WITH ISRAEL? A history of a nation, a people, and a whole lot of conflict.

There is a LOT of misinformation going around in relations to the history of Israel and Palestine. I’m going to do my best to provide you with a comprehensive overview of this land and what’s going on. 

Is it going to be perfect? No. But it’s going to be a lot better than the crap I came across today of an infograph that was filled with wrong information set to fuel the desire that people seem to have to ‘be on the right side’ of a war. 

This is going to be LONG. But I’m going to try to make it interesting. I hope that at least one person that enjoys history gets something out of this. And please, feel free to ask questions! 

And I do mean questions and not just hate screaming out ‘facts’ that you read once from someone with no sources on a badly photoshopped image of two women talking about how Israel isn’t a real place. 

I’m not here to spread hate. I’m here to give you the facts so that hopefully things can be understood a little better and maybe we can start choosing to help and not simply fuel the fire of hate. 

I’m going to use a lot of Wiki links because I would like to encourage people to go read the articles and do a little wiki deep dive for themselves. It’s fascinating, and hey, you might learn a few random cool things on the way.  I'd also encourage further reading if you are really interested or have questions. Wiki can only get you so far.

I’m also going to avoid talking about religious history in depth and simply stick to the people. 

SO! Let’s get into it! Let's actually LEARN something for once!

We start with 14 tribes in the Bronze age 1175-900 BCE

We get into some sketchy history that dates back to King David. Early records are rough because of all the war and destruction from back then...also that it was 1175-900 BCE and record keeping was often difficult at best when it wasn't being burned down. 

Essentially, the 14 tribes did what everyone did back then (and arguably still do) and they fought. A lot. 

King David (1005 BCE - 968 BCE) is credited as the one who gathered up a group of people that had been fighting with another group of people and kicking the ever loving shit out of these people with slingshots (a standard weapon used by shepherds to fight off thieves and LIONS) and the use of a nice newly created metal called Iron (welcome to the Iron Age!) 

He got mythicised a bit and the whole David vs Goliath became the story. It's where record keeping got a bit off... But there is proof of this man existing. 

After the war, he united the split up tribes and became King of Judah and created the capital of Jerusalem ((hey look! They got their name because they were from Judah. They were the Judes. The Jews. The Jewish People. See how language evolves over time?). 

The next king, one you may have heard of, was King Solomon (968BCE-928BCE). He is credited as being in charge of the building of the first Temple. 

The first temple was an incredibly sacred place and where a lot of the things that defined and made the Jewish culture were kept. 

After he died, there was no clear succession line and the kingdom split into two. The Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.

Let's head on over to Wiki and see what they have to say about this piece of land. 

"The earliest known reference to "Israel" as a people or tribal confederation is in the Merneptah Stele, an inscription from ancient Egypt that dates to about 1208 BCE, but the people group may be older." 

So yeah, we got Israel mentions that date back to 1208 BCE. Before the splitting of the religions and people. 

But WAIT. What's that strip of land to the west called the Philistine states??? 

It isn't what you think it is. 

The Philistines were a group of people who lived in Canaan during the Iron Age, roughly 1175 BCE. 

They often had tiffs with their neighbors over land and identity, which often left their relations with Jerusalem not the best. 

Now, during this time, many of the settlements throughout what is now Israel was sparsely populated and the original inhabitants (the Canaan people) were dwindling and fading out. It wasn't uncommon during this time to come across completely abandoned settlements and ruins. 

Most of the population was centered around Jerusalem. 

You see, back in the late Bronze age, Egypt called all the shots. Take a look at the map down below. Look at all that Egypt territory! 

(keep an eye on that purple bit. It’s about to get important). 

Egypt had final authority on all land disputes in this area. They considered the whole area to be a part of their domain. Their records were a little....outdated. They still listed everything as being run by the Canaanites! In fact, it wasn't uncommon for the lingering Canaanites to run to Egypt any time they had issues with the other tribes and demand that it be settled in their courts.  When we start to see mention of Israel in Egyptian records, it is referring to a people (think ethnicity) and NOT a state! And the Egyptians were starting to see them as a problem. 

So what happened to the Canaanites? They got absorbed by the tribes that were taking over the land: Philistines, Phoenicians (Hey, I know that word from middle school history!), and the Israelites. 

In 539 BCE, a little nation called Neo-Assyrian Empire took the northern part of Israel. Then they slowly expanded into the Assyrian Empire. 

Wait a moment. Zoom in. Enhance. Look at Jerusalem hanging out all alone over there as an unconquered little square surrounded by orange. 

You see, Jerusalem was built as a fortress. A fully walled in city surrounded by unforgiving hill country, and land that worked in their favor. 

And then, Babylon happened. They were having a pretty good run and getting a pretty good reputation as being a HUGE thorn in the side of the rising empires. 

You see that bright purple bit on the other map up there? Yeah, it’s about to get a LOT bigger. 

(This is a VERY simplified map. Because this is early Neo-Babylon and it absolutely expanded further than this over time. )

They expanded around 911-505 BCE and wiped the Philistine people out. POOF. GONE. These people most likely were killed off and taken as slaves by Babylon and then assimilated into the Babylonian people. 

What's interesting is that the Hebrew Bible (which is a record of the Jewish People, their history, and their story of survival as well as laws) is the primary source of the mention of the Philistines due to the conflict with them. (It’s also mentioned in the Quran.) 

So what happened? 

In-fighting. Lots and lots of in-fighting. But that's over simplifying it. If you are Jewish, you know what I'm talking about (this is why there is a rule about how "A Jew is a Jew is a Jew". Division is what leads to weakening of a people and leads to what happens next). The fracturing of the kingdom and disputes over rulers and laws caused them to divide their loyalties and left them open to bad things. Very bad things. 

Remember Babylon? And how they wiped out the Philistines? 

They didn't exactly avoid Israel on their voyage to wipe out the Philistines. 

720 BCE, The Kingdom of Israel fell to the newly forming Babylonian Empire. 

King Nebuchadnezzar II grew tired of Jewish revolts against the new empire (see the unconquerable city of Jerusalem) and well... 

They attacked Jerusalem. This is called "The Fall of the 1st Temple" in Jewish history (589–586 BCE).

Jerusalem fell and the Jewish People were exiled (taken as slaves) to Babylon. This is recorded history! 

It was during this that the Israelite religion really started to form and come together. 

You see, when the temple was wiped out, it was a blatant attempt to destroy not just a people, but a record of a people and erase them and all mentions of them from the face of the earth (See the Philistine people who pretty much only exist because of a few Jewish records about their disputes). 

But the people retained their stories in exile and really got together and formed the corner stone for the way the world's first Monotheistic religion worked: Judaism. (People of Judah. Get it? It's based on a people from a place!) 

The exile lasted for a long....long time. Exile not just as slaves, but with strict laws that forbid the Jewish people from setting foot in their old land. 

What happened next? King Cyrus! (At this point, Persia existed 550 BCE). 

I'm not going to get into the history of Persia (though it is FASCINATING and I recommend you look at it if you want to know the history of the middle east.) 

Now good king Cyrus told the Jews that they were all free to go in 538 BCE. So naturally the Jewish people packed up and made a run for Judah. 

This was called "The Return to Zion". 

What does that mean? 

"Zion is a placename in the Hebrew Bible, often used as a synonym for Jerusalem as well as for the Land of Israel as a whole." 

So that’s where that word originated from! 

OH. You know what else is called Zion? Mount Zion. A mountain located to the south... It has SIGNIFICANT biblical meaning, as well as the location of strongholds and other things. Look it up. 

So, the Jews were allowed to return to Judah, but it still fell under Persian rule. They were just considered a 'Self-governing Jewish Province". 

Some returned. Some stayed. They'd lived in Babylon so long that they figured they had made a home there. I’m also willing to bet that there was reluctance to leave due to 1. The great distance they had to travel (like some sort of…exodus?) and 2. Fear of it being a trick and getting captured again. Hmmmm…. Sounds like a familiar story? 

You may be asking yourself about Egypt right about now. What's this exodus and ten commandment thing and the plagues and all that fun business I heard about in the bible/torah/Quran. (Hi Moses! in Hebrew his name is Moshe. In the Quran it's Musa! But in Muslim, it's a different story and not exactly the familiar one against Pharaoh!) 

Well, I'm not going to get too deeply into the religious stories for a lot of reasons, but a lot of the original Bible (old testament)/Torah was based off of stories told while the Jewish people were in exile in Babylon! They told these stories as a way to keep their faith, traditions, and cultural identities alive while being forced to assimilate. (The story of Noah and the flood mimics a Babylonian flood myth: Gilgamesh Flood! It's a fascinating read). 

But that isn't to say that Judea didn't have complicated and often nasty relations with Egypt. 

But, as the Jewish people slowly started to return to Judah, a more distinctive Jewish identity, culture, and religion started to form. 

And it was at this time that the Second temple was built. 

This is where things are going to start getting complicated. 

Second temple period! (520 BCE-70 CE) 

Because of what happened in Babylon, it became more important than ever to revise how they did things. 

The second temple became a bigger deal and the way the city was run changed. 

Hey look, Persia has a new king! And he's not liking what he's seeing in Judea. These guys are starting to get a little too big for their britches. 

BUT WAIT! Look over there! It's Alexander the Great! And he's conquered Phoenicia and Gaza! 

The Greek Syrian empire is starting to spread out. But there's a small truce with Judea. They’ll protect them from Persia and the Jews can keep doing their thing as long as they aren't a problem. 

However, the Seleucid Empire is starting to push into Judea and take control. The Seleucid empire was a Greek power during the Hellenistic period (312 BCE) founded by the Macedonian Empire...Ruled by Alexander the Great. And they are big into worshiping other gods and forcing people to worship their gods and rulers. This is a big no no for the Jewish people and kingdom of Judea. 

They start to send envoys to Greek trying to get the rulers there to listen to them. It’s not long before their envoys start coming back with bad news….and then stop coming back. 

The Jewish people have seen this before. 

And guess what? Jerusalem has become a problem. They aren't liking all the Hellenistic influence happening in Judea or the fact that the empire is starting to put a stranglehold on them. 

Alright, all my Jewish people? It's time to revolt with the Maccabees! (167-140 BCE) Jerusalem was under siege and the walls are breached! The city is taken and the temple has been captured by the enemy. 

Remember about the hostile countryside I mentioned earlier? 

Time for some Guerrilla warfare! The Maccabees retake the city and spend 8 days fixing up the temple after it was desecrated and all they got is just a little oil that stretches out way longer than it should have lasted (Hanukkah cliff note story version). 

But, there are other powers that are threatening them. Egypt has fallen and the Seleucid Empire is pretty pissed at them. 

We get revolt after revolt. Judea wants the Greeks gone and Rome is the power to do it.

140 BCE - 63 BCE. The Hasmonean dynasty takes control of Judea. They expand outward. 

The Hasmonean dynasty was a ruling dynasty of Judea that is WAY more complicated than I'm willing to get into because I barely understand it. But here it is if anyone wants to take a crack at it. 

Basically, with the Seleucid Empire falling apart, Judea gained autonomy and expanded into neighboring regions (Perea, Samaria, Idumea, Galilee, and Iturea). 

The Roman Republic stepped in at some point and it became a "client state" of Rome. 

Now, those of you that know your Greek/Roman history know that some big power changes are starting to happen. 

Enter King Herod (37 BCE) (And all the Christians in the room say BOOO.) 

Now SOME of you may be paying attention to the dates. We stopped going down and started going back up. 

All the Christian’s here know what that means. A certain Jewish man has been born, caused problems for the Romans, and then was killed by the Romans for causing problems. 

We now have the birth of Christianity. At this point it’s just seen as a division of Judaism and not a real separate entity. 

We got Julius Caesar and Pompey and Mark Antony and Augustus happening over there in Rome and Judea is doing its best to stay alive and independent. They need protection from the other places that are trying to take them out and they know Rome is the key. So they make deals with one ruler only for that ruler to be killed and replaced by other rulers. It's getting hard for them to keep up. 

6 CE Rome is their ally. 44 CE Rome sends someone to preside over them and Judea is considered a "Minor province." 

Powers are changing hands so fast that no one knows who is in charge anymore. 

The Hasmonean Kingdom eventually falls, but the Jewish desire for independence continues. Only now, they are at war with Rome. 

This whole time period is a cluster of problems and it’s honestly hard to keep up with who was allies and in charge and ruling and expanding and fighting. Just know that Caesar wasn’t the only one getting knifed in the back and by the time a face was stamped on a coin there was a new face in charge. It was rough. 

The important thing to know is that in the year 70 CE, Rome besieged Jerusalem. 

Emperor Titus was done with the Jewish issue. 

They held out as long as they could. And then the walls fell. 

The city was burned and the temple was looted and burned. The majority of the population that wasn't killed in the fighting was outright massacred and the rest were taken as slaves. 

The Jews that managed to make it out of the city ran for the countryside and hillside. Many were hunted down and killed by waiting soldiers. The Jewish population was sold and scattered across the roman empire. 

The loot taken from the temple was paraded through Rome with the slaves. They even made a monument for it! 

Arch of Titus, which still stands in Rome today. You can see them carrying the holy Menorah through the streets. 

There is plenty of Archeological evidence that supports what happened at the destruction of Jerusalem. 

Massive stone collapses from the Temple Mount's walls were discovered laying over the Herodian street that runs along the Western Wall. 

It's theorized that 1.1 Million people, the majority of the Jewish people, were killed during the siege. 

I can't convey enough just how big this event was. 

All Jewish people were forbidden from setting foot in Judea. 

We now come to 73 CE, Christianity is considered its own distinct religion. 

So what happened to the land? 

All the Jews were gone. Banished, enslaved, or dead. So who got the land? 

Well... Firstly, the city of Jerusalem was gone. When Rome wanted something gone, they made it gone. 

There was rubble and not much else. 

Know what else they did? The forest was burned down. The land was razed to a point where even today, it is still struggling to recover. 

Jewish areas around Jerusalem were systematically destroyed one by one. There were still uprisings here and there, but they were quickly put down. 

The Roman emperor Hadrian decided that he'd had enough of revolts and set out to destroy Judea once and for all. And while he did kick it in the teeth, he never succeeded in destroying the people. (They got real good at surviving and real stubborn about not getting eradicated). Small Jewish areas did survive in various outlier areas and small farming places that were otherwise overlooked. But life was certainly not made easy for them.

Judaea was changed to Syria Palaestina. 

Sound familiar? Two empires that were enemies to the Jewish people. Remember when I said the Greek records were really out of date and still listed the Canaanites as in charge of the area? Well… They also still called the area Palestina.   You see, Hadrian got the name "Palaestina" from Herodotus' Histories from nearly 500 years before. But Herodotus only called the strip of land along the coast "Palaistine" after the Philistines. He wasn't referring to all of Judaea. And the reason Herodotus called that strip of coastline "Palaistine" was because the Philistines were Mycenaean Greeks, so he was recognizing a (long since dead) former settlement of Greeks. (When Rome wants you gone, they want you GONE and to suffer).

Rome built a colony on the ruins of Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina. Eventually, former Judea became a Christian pilgrimage and was settled by Christians. The land became known as Palestine. 

Not what you were expecting, huh? Bet you didn’t think the Christians would get involved in this Jewish vs Muslim issue. 

So 900 BCE to 70 CE, it belonged to the Jewish people (with the brief exception to the period of exile to Babylon). 

Then the Christians took over from Rome when Christianity took over and mass conversions started to sweep the world. 

Eventually, the population became a mixed bag of Romans and migrants from nearby provinces. 

361-363 CE - The Roman Emperor says the Jewish people can return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. In fact, he encourages it! He’s excited about it and starts to fund it and gathers up all the leaders, who are confused but cautiously optimistic. 

The Emperor is assassinated before anything gets underway and the Jewish people are banished from the holy land again. 

438 CE - Jews are now allowed to visit the Temple site. Note how it's visit, not live. A few times a year they are let into the city to visit where the Temple once stood so they can pray, then they are forced to leave again. 

Oops! Back up a it! What’s happening over there during all this? It’s the 7th Century and Islam has now become a major religion! Any Jews hanging out in the Arabian Peninsula? Convert or get out. They’re going to keep their eye on what’s been happening with Rome, the Jews, and the Christians in regards to ‘Palestine’. 

After all, Islam is a cousin to Judaism and they do share similarities to the holy sites. 

And there have been MANY wars over the holy sites. Sieges, betrayals, false alliances, and an overall repeated attempt to eradicate and massacre people over the land.

Now, we all know the Roman Empire eventually fell. But the Jewish people? Still banished. They became the Diaspora. Attempting to settle in place after place until they are either massacred, converted, or kicked out. They have no home. Just a place to sit for a bit until the next massacre forces them to flee. 

That's not even getting into the Crusades of the Christians against Islam in Palestine 1095-1291!! 

So... Skipping over a LOT of history and massacres and terrible things....

Oh boy oh boy. I'm going to skip a LOT. Because the crusades are a mess of WTFery and I'm not writing a thesis here (right?). 

But... 1917, enter Britain. Because of course Britain has to get involved at some point. You wouldn't be telling a world history tragedy story without Britain somehow getting involved. 

They take control of Palestine from the Turks. Basically, WWI just ended and the Ottoman Empire lost big time. Their punishment? Britain now rules their land (I’ll get to that in a bit). 

A decree is issued establishing Palestine as a national home for Jewish People, so long as nothing is done to cause prejudice or remove the civil rights or religious rights of the existing people that live there (Non-Jewish communities). 

Many Jewish people interpret this to mean that ALL of Palestine is now a Jewish State. 

1921: Britain changes their mind. All of Palestine east of the Jordan River is closed to Jewish settlement, but not to Arab settlement. 

Oh boy. 

1923: Britain says Arabs can immigrate but NOT Jewish people to Syria and Lebanon. 

What? What are you doing Britain? 

Remember that Western Wall rubble that was found in Jerusalem? The last remains of the Temple? By 1929: Muslims and Jews have been fighting over that wall for ages. Riots break out in Palestine and Jewish people are massacred. 

Annnnnnd that takes us to 1933 when Hitler rises to power. Jewish people everywhere attempt to start to emigrate and flee to what they hope are safe countries. 

1939: British government limits Jewish immigrants to 10,000 a year. Jewish people are trapped and the Holocaust catches up. 

1945-1948: Post Holocaust refugees try to find the only place that they may call home: Palestine. The British government detains them and prevents their entry. 

1946-1948: Things start to get violent in Palestine and British rule is unsure if they want Jews there or not. 

1947: the UN approves the creation of the Jewish State and an Arab State in British ruled Palestine. 

1948: Israel declares independence as a Jewish State and opens up to all Jewish people trying to find a safe place to live after the Holocaust. Essentially, it becomes a refugee state and if you are Jewish in any manner of the word, you are now a citizen and have a country to escape to when the massacres happen. 

A Jewish Exodus from Arab and Muslim lands results as they flee or are expelled. 

Egypt invades and Israel holds fast, expanding its borders as a result. 

Egypt continues to attack and threaten Israel until the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel captured the West Bank

(Pictured here)

The West Bank is considered the heart of Palestinians. This is known as the Gaza Strip. 

Many Israelis see this area as their ancestral Homeland. Many Israeli settlements are starting to push into this area in a ruthless attempt to take it back. I DO say ruthless because they have been using violence against those living there and farming there. 

There is international law that states that this area is off limits to Israelis. 

"1890: The term "Zionism" is coined by an Austrian Jewish publicist Nathan Birnbaum in his journal "Self Emancipation" and is defined as the National movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish Sovereignty in the Land of Israel. "

Now, the term Zionism has taken on different roles and meanings over the years. I mentioned above what the word means and comes from. But it was later claimed by right wing Israelis who want the Arab nations out of Israel. It was later taken back again to being used as a simple declaration of nationalism for the right for Jews to have a place to call their own. 

It's...complicated. I think Zionism can only really be defined by those who claim they are Zionists. Which ideology they follow may vary and much like any notion of nationalism, there are problems and dangers. 

Is it wrong to be a Zionist? Depends. But the answer is not a straightforward yes or no. 

The Jewish people deserve to exist in a state. But so do the Palestinians. 

Let's talk about Palestine! 

Historically, you got nothing until Judea is destroyed and the people are taken as slaves and killed in 70 CE. 

Then you have a bunch of Christians wandering around it declaring all the historical sites to be theirs. Which, since Christianity comes from Judaism, they happen to share a lot of the same spiritual and historical sites. 

But so does Islam.

There are repeated revolts, wars, disputes, and claims to the area by MANY different factions. 

Many times the Jewish people attempted to retake the area only to be put down again and again. 

In the late 6th Century, Islam was founded. They conquered Palestine in 636. Unlike previous rulers, they allowed Jews and Christians the freedom to practice their religion in peace.... but they had to pay a special tax and be submissive to Muslims. But, they did lift the centuries long ban on Jews being banished from Jerusalem. 

Guess who wasn't a fan of all this? 

Time for Crusades to 'liberate' Jerusalem from the Muslims. 

European Christians campaigned against Muslims to reconquer the 'Holy Land' of Palestine. 

Hey look! The Ottomon Empire (1466 CE) decided to show up! 

As I mentioned above, the Ottoman Empire had sided with the Germans and lost. They were driven from Palestine and British rule took over. 

Remember how I mentioned that the British government declared Palestine to be a Jewish State in 1916? Well it turns out that just one year earlier, in 1915, it had been declared an Arab State in which the UK agreed to recognize Arab independence. BOTH declarations were seen as giving full control to either the Jewish People or the Arabs. 

Good job Britain. Way to do what you always do and cock it up. 

Here’s the biggest problem with saying that you side fully with Palestine. Internationally recognized terrorists political movement of: Hamas. 

Hamas is an Acronym that translates to 'Islamic Resistance Movement'. 

It's a political military movement that governs parts of the Gaza Strip. 

They have taken charge and governed the Gaza Strip since 2006 and have periodically attacked Israel. They promote Palestinian Nationalism in a strictly Islamic context. 

In fact, they propose that Israel NOT be recognized as a state and that a strictly Palestinian State be formed. 

All the truces they offer to Israel over the years? Incredibly Antisemitic. They have carried out numerous terrorist attacks against the citizens of Israel and continue to 'advocate' for the return of Palestine without Jews. 

They tend to be the 'dominant political force' in Palestine because of their anti-israel stance. They pretend to want a two state solution, but will repeatedly reject talks and demand "From the River to the Sea". Their end goal is to remove ALL of Israel and return the entire region to Palestine, thus making it an Islamic State. 

It’s important to know that this is a radical group that unfortunately has a lot of control and uses its own people to terrorize and hide behind in an effort to bring about fear and hate and death. The actual Palestinian people do not deserve that. 

It’s also important to know that the Israeli people do not all support their own government or leaders who have decided to take up an extremist approach to attempting to eradicate the terrorist movement. 

MANY Israeli and Palestinian people believe in trying to find a negotiation that will benefit both sides and share a land that in a long lengthy way does represent three major religions. 

It is important to know what Charities are supporting. Where the money is going, and who is only furthering violence on both sides. 

It’s also important to know your history. 

When I was little, If you said someone was Jewish, I imagined a white European man. Why is that the common image of a Jewish person? How is it possible to be a colonizer if your people come from that country in the first place? 

So I'm going to ask you a question, and I REALLY want you to think about this. 

If someone owns land and comes from a land, they are forcibly removed from the land for a LONG amount of time, someone else comes in and makes a home of this land and lives there for a long time, and then the first people want that land back.... Do they become colonizers? Are they wrong? Do they not deserve their land back?

If you think the answer is yes, you need to go have a conversation with the Native Americans. 

BUT, as we all know... What do you do about the people that currently own and live on that land that was stolen from the first people? Maybe you didn't do the stealing, but you acquired stolen property and if you give it back then now you have nowhere else to go.... What sort of conversation needs to happen now? How do you solve this problem? 

If you made it to the end, I thank you so much for taking the time to be curious about history and how it impacts current events. If you have questions, please let me know.

#History #Palestine #Israel #Stop letting tik tok tell you what to think #Antisemitism isn't the answer #Long post #Taking a risk here but it's worth it #Jewish history #jumblr #Over simplification of events but still useful I hope #Please read #please at least skim it

[canary-prince]

Hey Guys It's Indigenous History Month

Consider donating to some of these great organizations, yeah?

First Nations Development Institute; highly rated by Charity Navigator, FNDI attempts to lift Native communities out of poverty through a wide variety of grants and programs. This is a link to info about their programs and impact.

Native American Rights Fund; a legal collective fighting to preserve tribal sovereignty, challenge systemic racism within the American legal system, and educate the greater public about the conditions Natives live in. Here's their about us.

Native American Heritage Association: focused on rez communities in South Dakota and Wyoming, NAHA provides heating assistance, food, tools, and other vital household goods to combat the effects of poverty in these vulnerable communities. Here's a list of their programs.

Association Of American Indian Affairs: this year is their centennial! That's right, these guys have been working since 1922 to fight assimilation, return stolen artifacts, and make cultural connections with Native youth. These days, they even host summer camps, because everyone deserves a childhood. Learn about their history on ongoing impact here.

Contribute directly to help the Sioux Tribe at Standing Rock; this will also help Sitting Bull college, a higher learning institute on tribal grounds.

Ojibwe Cultural Foundation; fighting to preserve and grow the language, art, and culture of the Anishinaabe nations of Canada. Check them out.

#charity #mutual aid #indigenous sovereignty #indigenous history month #the monster speaks

[tanadrin]

Shoemaker on literacy, memory, oral tradition, and the Quran:

Studies of literacy in pre-Islamic Arabia have been severely overlooked in recent Quran scholarship; in fact, literacy in the 7th century Hijaz was "almost completely unknown" and "writing was hardly practiced at all in the time of Muhammad." "[T]here seems to be a widespread agreement among experts on the early history of the Arabic language 'that, before and immediately after the rise of Islam, Arab culture was in all important respects fundamentally oral.'" Ancient graffiti in the region seems to have been a bit like early runic writing in Scandinavia--not central to the culture, mostly decorative and incidental, and certainly not used for long, important texts. "There is, in effect, a lot of 'Kilroy was here' scattered across the Arabian desert." Indeed, most of these graffiti are personal names or private in nature--we're not talking monumental inscriptions here, we're talking bored herders scratching stuff onto rocks to pass the time.

Southern Arabia and the larger oases to the north had more in the way of literate elites (and thus things like monumental inscriptions), but these places were far from the central inland Hijaz. If someone in this region did want to become literate, they would probably have learned to read and write in Greek or Aramaic, which were useful and important linguae francae.

As in very early Christianity, writing occupied a controversial position vis a vis orality--oral tradition was primary for the production and transmission of culturally important things like religious texts, poetry, literary prose, genealogy, and history. The shift to a literate culture came only with the expansion of Muhammad's polity into a wealthy, multicultural empire rather than a tribal state. Indeed, much of the early Caliphate's administration used Greek and other languages--Arabic entered administration only slowly, since a lot of early bureaucrats were drawn from the Roman and Sasanian bureaucracy.

And like early Christianity, another reason not to feel any urgency to write down Muhammad's teachings was that early Muslims expected the end of the world to come very soon, maybe initially even before Muhammad's own death.

The dialect of the Quran is distinctive and unusual; it is very difficult to locate where this dialect might have originated. Ahmad Al-Jallad tentatively identifies an Old Hijazi dialect, but the evidence for this dialect (besides the Quran itself) is limited and mostly much more recent, and he assumes the Quran was produced in the Hijaz.

The Arabic of the Quran can probably be identified with the prestige dialect of Levantine Arabic in the Ummayad period, but the origin of that dialect, and what Arabic dialects were brought together there in that time, is hard to ascertain with certainty.

Shoemaker thinks the Quran started as short collections drawn from individual memories following the conquest and encounters with widespread literacy; these collections would have been considered open, and subject to influence from oral tradition. They were combined into increasingly larger collections, with additional traditions and revisions, emergin as something like divergent versions of the Quran (though still not fully static and closed). Finally, the traditions of these regional versions, with other written and oral traditions, were fashioned into their canonical form under Abd al-Malik, and this version was progressively enforced across the empire.

Shoemaker brings in memory science and the anthropology of oral cultures: memory is highly frangible and fallible. Even though it functions well for day to day tasks, it's important not to overlook how common misremembering and re-remembering alters information in both personal and collective memory when talking about a text that even Islamic tradition agrees was not written down within Muhammad's lifetime.

Most forgetting occurs shortly after an event in question; a small core of memories we develop about an event will persist for a significant time after. These findings have been corroborated both in the lab and in the circumstances of everyday life.

Memory is not primarily reproductive; literal recall is, in evolutionary terms, pretty unimportant, and brains omit needless detail. Remembering thus involves a lot of reconstruction more than it does reproduction; memories are storied piecewise in different parts of the brain, and are assembled on recall, with the gaps being filled in using similar memory fragments drawn from comparable experiences.

Note Bartlett's experiments using a short Native American folktale; when asked to recall this story, even after only fifteen minutes participants introduced major and minor changes. Subsequent recall didn't improve accuracy, though the basic structure of the memory developed pretty quickly in each individual. But this structure was not especially accurate, and significant details vanished or were replaced with new information. Most often this information was drawn from the subject's culture (in this case, Edwardian England), forming a memory that made more sense to them and had more relevance in their context. The overall style was quickly lost, and replaced by new formations, and there was a persistent tendency to abbreviate. After a few months, narrative recall consisted mostly of false memory reports, a finding verified by subsequent replications of his experiments.

Experiential and textual memory in particular degrades very rapidly; this degredation is much faster when information is transmitted from one person to another. Epithets change into their opposites, incidents and events are transposed, names and numbers rarely survive intact more than a few reproductions, opinions and conclusions are reversed, etc. Figures like Jesus or Muhammad will hardly be remembered accurately even by people who knew them.

The style of the Quran (e.g., prose, and often terse, elliptic, and occasionally downright nonsensical prose at that) does not lend itself to memorization; Shoemaker argues it is only possible for people to memorize the Quran now because it has become a written document they can consult in the process.

Eyewitness testimony is of course also notoriously unreliable, despite what apologists (in particular Christian apologists) have argued. Cf. Franz von Liszt's experiment in 1902, where a staged argument in a lecture escalates to one student pulling a gun on another--after revealing this event was scripted and staged, and asking different students to recall the details of the event at different intervals afterward, literally none of them got it right--the best reports, taken immediately, got things about one quarter correct. Even repeatedly imagining a scenario vividly enough can eventually lead to a false memory of it occurring (a phenomenon which may explain some alien abduction reports). People mistake post-even hearsay or visualization for firsthand knowledge, especially in the case of dramatic events.

What memory excels at is remembering broad strokes--we are adapted to retain the information which is most likely to be needed, i.e., the gist (or, more likely, the broad themes) of events and information, and not its exact form.

There's a long digression here about John Dean's testimony on the Watergate conspiracy--this may be the first book in early Islamic studies to have Richard Nixon in the index.

Even competitive memory champions train for short-term recall of large amounts of information; they, and other people with preternaturally good memories, are of course exceedingly rare. It's very unlikely that someone could remember, several decades after the fact, precisely (or even mostly) what was told to them by their friend whose brother's wife's cousin was really there. So even within the traditional account of the Quran's composition, it makes no sense to claim it is in fact the verbatim word of Muhammad.

As in the case of Solomon Shereshevski, when you do have preternaturally good recall even for (say) lists of nonsense syllables, the result is actually kind of debilitating--you have so many useless details to sort through, it makes it quite hard to function at an abstract level. And hyperthymesiacs, though they exhibit a high level of recall about their past, still often remember things incorrectly, at about the same rate as people with normal memories--they are no less susceptible to false or distorted memories.

Nevertheless most modern scholars treat the Quran as a verbatim transcript of Muhammad's words. This is exceedingly unlikely! Especially given that "group" or "collaborative" memory--memories as reconstructed by individuals working together--appears to be even less accurate than individual memory. You get better results having people try to recall events by themselves.

Since during the age of conquests the majority of converts were not closely preoccurpied with the interpretation of the Quran, it would have had to have been rediscovered and hermeneutically reinvented later; the memory of Muhammad's words were being shaped by the nature of the community he founded, as its members collective and individual needs continued to evolve along with the context of transmission.

Many people, both scholars and the general public, seem to believe that people in oral cultures have remarkable capacities for memory not possessed by those of written cultures. Study of oral cultures has shown this is demonstrably false; literacy in fact strengthens verbal and visual memory, while illiteracy impairs these abilities. People in literate cultures have better memories!

Oral transmission is not rote replication; it is a process of recomposition as the tradition is recreated very time it is transmitted. Oral cultures can effectively preserve the gist of events over time, but each time the details are reconstituted, and the tradition can radically diverge from its first repetition, with the stories of the past being reshaped to make them relevant to the present and present concerns.

The collective memory of Muhammad and the origins of Islam as preserved in the Sunni tradition would have forgotten many details as a matter of course, many others because they were no longer relevant to the later Sunni community, and they would have been reshaped in ways that made them particularly suited to the life and community of their contemporary circumstances, exemplifying and validating their religious beliefs--ones very different from those of Muhammad's earliest followers.

The early Muslim conquests put a comparatively small number of soldiers, scattered across a huge territory, in a wildly different cultural and social context, especially in close contact with different Christian and Jewish communities, esp. in the Levant, which rapidly became the cultural center of the new empire. Jews and Christians may have joined the new religious community in large numbers in this time also; their faith and identity would have continued to evolve in this period, as we would expect from comparative episodes in the history of other religions. By the time that Muhammad's teachings were formally inscribed, the memories of his few hundred initial companions would have been transmitted and dispersed to a large number of people in a totally different set of circumstances, with consequences for how those memories exactly were recalled.

Jack Goody, researcher on oral traditions: "It is rather in literate societies that verbatim memory flourishes. Partly because the existence of a fixed original makes it much easier; partly because of the elaboration of spatially oriented memory techniques; partly because of the school situation which has to encourage "decontextualized" memory tasks since it has removed learning from doing and has redefined the corpus of knowledge. Verbatim memorizing is the equivalent of exact copying, which is intrinsic to the transmission of scribal culture, indeed manuscript cultures generally."

Techniques like the ars memoriae belong to literate cultures and were invented by literate people; they are unknown in oral cultures. Oral and literate cultures in fact have a radically different idea of what it means for a text to be "the same"--in the former, word-for-word reproduction is not necessary. A poem can be "the same poem" even if every time it is performed it is largely unique.

Case of the Bagre, the sacred text of the LoDagaa people of Ghana, an extended religious poem used in a liturgical context. Variations in its recitation aren't just variations in wording; changes in recitation can be radical, and the last version is always the starting point. Nevertheless (as in other oral cultures) it is considered "the same," functionally identical with each recitation. These differences appeared even among different performances by the same reciter, or multiple times in the same ceremony. Even the most formulaic parts have great variability. Similar variability in oral texts in other oral cultures has been documented by other anthropologists, including for historical events.

Shoemaker notes that the tradition that the Vedas were transmitted without variation from the time of their composition remains an article of faith in some quarters of South Asian studies; this flies in the face of all available evidence. In fact we have no idea what the state of the Vedic texts was prior to the earliest manuscripts; they may have been written all along.

Collective memory is shaped by contemporary cultural imperatives--examples of Abe Lincoln, a white supremacist considered nothing special by his peers; Christopher Columbus, once revered; the last stand at Masada, considered a minor event of little importance to broader Jewish history until the founding of Israel.

There doesn't have to be any conspiracy or coordinated effort for false narratives about the past to take root.

The hard horizon of communicative memory is around eighty years; so historical consciousness basically only has two modes: the mythic past of collective memory, and the recent past less than eighty or so years ago.

Lack of a clear "generic" monotheism in the Hijaz around the time of Muhammad's birth means the expectations and memory of Muhammad would have been profoundly shaped by Christian and Jewish beliefs.

Early Islam, like early Christianity, wasn't old enough to have a clear distinction between historical/origins memory and recent/communicative memory.

"For most of the seventh century, then, Muhammad’s followers had a memory that was still immersed in the social and cultural milieux of the late ancient Near East, from which they had yet to clearly differentiate themselves. They eventually would do this in large part by developing a distinctive collective memory for their group, different from those inherited from Judaism and Christianity, a process that was no doubt delayed by their fervent belief that the world would soon come to an end, making such an endeavor rather pointless for a time. Only as the end continued to remain in abeyance, and the community’s living memory grew ever distant from the time of origins did they develop a collective memory of their own. Yet, as Islamic collective memory began to evolve, one imagines that it initially took different shapes within the various pockets of Believers that were scattered across their empire. The basic elements of this nascent collective memory were, as Halbwachs says of the early Christians, “still dispersed among a multitude of spatially separated small communities. These communities were neither astonished, anxious, nor scandalized that the beliefs of one community differed from those of another and that the community of today was not exactly the same as that of yesterday.” Thus, we should expect to find a significant degree of diversity in religious faith and memory among the different early communities of the Believers, scattered and outnumbered as they were among the Jews and Christians of their burgeoning empire. Only with ʿAbd al-Malik’s program of Arabization and Islamicization was a new, distinctively Islamic collective memory and identity concretized and established for this new religious community. It was a collective identity that was formed from the top down and imposed, at the expense of any other alternative collective memories, with the full power and backing of the imperial state."

The limits of oral tradition apply even more strongly to the hadith and biographies.

#stephen shoemaker #Creating the Quran #islamic studies

[monstrouslyobsessed]

A tribe composed only of men in a tropical forest. They are cannibals and eat members of other tribes and trespassers. Reader and her group was captured and since the chef and the other members found her cute and breedable, they decided to not eat her and make her the "mother" of the tribe. Thanks! —anonymous

—a/n: hm, im a lil iffy doing this one due to potential xenophobia and cultural insensitivity (regardless of what one may think of certain customs, the tribes who inspired this such suggestion are still people who deserve a measure of respect), so i’ll be changing the species and incorporate it in my beastfolk au instead to hopefully avoid offending anyone.

also, this turned into a fic (plus me making it into beastfolk au so no claiming without permission) lmao so not really a concept anymore. sorry about that! im keeping the format tho.

also, I wanna make a note for you for the asterisk marking in the tag list. the word i made up (Ce’ne, specifically) basically meant both ‘mother’ and ‘father’ and can be passed as gender neutral, to have/give children. to be safe though, im marking it as gendered language.

—tw / tags: gn reader, brief use of gendered language*, language barrier, injuries, horror, implied maneating, gore, multiple deaths, implied trespassing, implied beastfolk trafficking, kidnapping, confinement, body painting, teratophilia, exophilia, general yandere themes, sfw? —readers are advised to read at their own discretion.

—featured character(s): the jaguars tribe / the ‘Jags’, the Scarred One —word count: 2.1k

—this is part of my beastfolk universe! —zoo era.

Everything hurts, especially the excruciating pain in your back. It felt as though your flesh had been flayed and then set ablaze, the agony akin to acid being poured into open wounds. You groggily dragged your eyes open with a whimper choked out from your dusty throat. Needles of numbness buzzed on your damp skin and the only sound you could hear was the pounding of your own heart in your ears.

It was dark when you came to, but not pitch-black as you could see thin gaps of light creeping through wherever you were currently. The flickering golden light was in a constant motion, casting dancing shadows across the space. You could smell a smoky scent of burning wood and the air was heavy and damp, hanging on your skin like a winter blanket. Your brain was still groggy and the answers to where you were and why, were not forthcoming.

At hearing your groans, someone hissed out for your attention, “—! —! Are you okay!?” They kept their voice low, as if they were trying to avoid alerting anyone outside the threshold you were placed in.

You could barely see with the blur of pain fogging your eyes, but you slowly shook your head, “I…I don’t know.” You desperately searched for the owner of that voice, but you found nothing but a shifting blob of shadow some feet away from you. You couldn’t move, your arms tied to what felt like a wooden pole and your ankles bounded together with bushy ropes. Your head was ringing loudly and you moaned, “Wh—what happened?”

“T-the d-director fucked over all of us, —!” Their reply was edged with a sense of betrayal, “He was one of ‘em fuckin’ zoo hunters, using us to get close to the Jags—!”

Fuck. You remembered with a contorted grimace. As an up-and-coming researcher with a vested interest in studying the feral beastfolks and animals, you had ambitions and dreams realized. You had been honored to have encountered and even personally met a handful of tribal people. Although It was no grand merit, you learned enough about their customs and languages to set up a survey to map out the possible locations of local tribes.

As you’d learned, this knowledge was a dangerous thing to have.

The director must have been after a specific tribe of the feral beastfolk; the whiskeredfolks with ringed spots in their golden fur that you and your colleagues had nicknamed 'Jags.'. Unlike the timid, long-legged tribe you had befriended with and the one with thick-maned people with whom you had more tenuous relationships with, this particular one was notorious for being dangerous and killing the outsiders on sight.

Without a doubt, you and your expedition group had flown too close to the sun and got burned for it. Despite your frequent warnings, the so-called director convinced everyone to take just a 'few steps closer' to the Jags’ territory. In a blink, all hell’s broke loose.

You remembered the sound of roaring and the sight of bodies scantily clad in animal skins launching themselves at you and your people, weapons in hand. You felt a searing pain in your back and then darkness consumed you. The last thing you saw was gruesome, with a spear tearing through a fellow researcher’s chest.

The vision still burned within your mind’s eye and tears stung your bruised cheeks.

“S—shit,” You dug the soles of your bare feet (what happened to your boots?) into the wet dirt and thumped your head against the wooden pole. You tried counting what you could see, but there was only one. “w-where is everyone else?”

Your colleague went quiet. The jeering laughter and a sole human shrieking followed your question. The screaming sounded suspiciously like the director’s—and your blood went cold when that cry abruptly ended to a gurgle.

The shadow blob nodded, their motion solemn in the darkness, “We made him confessed when ‘ey tossed us in here when you were still out. Since ‘en,  ‘em cats started picking us clean one by one. ‘e bastard was the first one to go, probably because he’s big and meaty.”

You caught a hitched breath and heard them shuddering, “We’re ‘e last ones. Why didn’t we listen to you?” Your colleague choked.

Why didn’t they, you’d wonder about this for the rest of your remaining life, but now, your brain could barely function with your back throbbing in pain. You could feel the back of your shirt being soaked through with your warm blood and your body slowly going cold. With a rasping breath, you rolled over your heavy head to your fellow researcher, “H—hey, at least…at least we’re dying doing what we loved, right?”

It was a shit joke, but it was enough to get them to snort.

“Hopefully ‘ey’d put us out quicker ‘an what ‘ey did to ‘e bastard.” They mumbled.

A whispering flap of the tent’s entryway fluttered.

A flickering light blinded you, casting shadows across the dark enclosure and preventing you from seeing who had entered. Several footsteps grinding into the dirt and a brief warmth pressed against your knees. You heard a mumbling in another language, oddly approving, and a short shuffling from where your colleague was.

The light was gone and you found yourself alone in the suffocating darkness. With a slow groan, you braced for your inevitable end, hoping that at least everyone in your group had met a quick demise.

Sans that fucker of a director who lured you all into a death trap.

You closed your eyes, not expecting to see another day.

When you woke up, you saw the daylight creeping inside the gaps of the woven palm leaves and blinked in confusion. When you turned your head, you realized you were resting on a soft bedding, of dried leaves and colorful fabrics, and was staring at the knitted canopy. Weren’t you tied up to a support pole earlier, with your back gaping and bleeding?

A moan tumbled out from your lips. From the corner of your eyes, you saw movement and you jerked when a voice bellowed not too far away from you. As if they were raising an alarm—or calling for someone’s attention. Fear struck your heart—

And you so wanted to move. Your body was too stiff and your muscles soft from exhaustion and strains from your injuries. Absently, your skin itched and you somehow found enough strength to glance down your body.

You swallowed thickly at your current state.

Where had your clothes gone? Why were you half naked and wearing patterned animal skins? Why had they tended to you at all?

On your skin, leaves and odd colored globs were plastered over your injuries. Why had they spared you?

“R’oa,” a deep voice entered your ears and drenched your spine with a shiver.

Hello, you absently translated from knowing some of the local common tongue. You slowly rolled your head over and blinked at the sight of the kneeling figure. Your heart jumped to your throat when it dawned on you on who he may be.

His face and body were marked with striking decorations of rosettes and bright painted patterns you recognized as his people’s custom. He wore ornate accessories, including a heavy ring through his flared nostrils, to signify his rank in the tribe. Towering over you with ease, he was large and his presence nothing but raw power and his naked torso coiled with rippling muscles.

But, none of his features stood out as much as his scars littering his skin—and one of which had left a long, jagged  pit down his cheek and left his eye an striking grey hue. He was a well fought warrior, perhaps the best in his tribe.

Without a doubt, you were in the presence of one true predator.

Shakily, you nodded with a quiet return of his foreign language.

He seemed pleased by how submissive you were being.

There were no other option left but to humor the person who could easily shallow you whole in several gulps.

“*Canu zuhs nu i'ars nuus nil zuazsu.” He grasped on your forearm, the pads on his palm were coarse and hard on your skin, and tugged you off your bed.

Come...meet…people? You groggily tried to translate, as you went along with the whiskeredfolk’s whim. A yelp darted from your lips, when he swung you into the crook of his arm and pain rung around your eyes from the sudden movement and your injuries feeling like they were being split open once more.

“Tuil i'asu uhrthisus, ilai rsizuhs ail!”  Another voice snarled out, and you flinched as you distantly heard a slap on the whiskeredfolk's person. You glanced upward and saw him wearing a crossed brow.

Injured…that was all you understood from their exchange.

With his ears folded back to his skull, the scarred male grumbled something back to the owner of the other voice. He quietened at the growling reply, and you still trembled from the way his voice seemed to burrow deep inside your skin. You could feel his foreign words through his chest, vibrating into your aching ribs.

The other voice sounded feminine, possibly aged, and you wondered if they were the one who had nursed you back to health. You had no energy to crane your head over the scarred one’s bicep to see, catching a brief glimpse of a strange hood over their head.

The scarred one took you outside, pushing the flap aside, and you winced at how bright the dabbled sunlight was. When your eyes readjusted, you blinked and regretted every decision you’d ever made in your life. Your stomach curdled at the sight and your nose stung.

Within the ashy pit, still smoking from the previous night’s bonfire, black skeletal remains hung on their respective stakes. There was little meat left on their bones and their skulls were missing. You did not wish to dwell on why and ripped away your tearful eyes from your colleagues’ bodies.

Why were you spared?

Oh, gods, the stench in the air was foul, smelling like burnt meat and melted plastic. Smothering your hands over your lower face, you gagged the exact moment the scarred male barked out. You grimaced, trying to make sense of the words he shouted out.

“Mil zuazsu, I si'ass izar suu!”

People, call.

You were so distracted by the gruesome sight that you hadn’t realized how quiet the settlement was. Initially, the only whiskeredfolks you could see were several teenage males, looking at you with curiosity in their eyes.

When you blinked, more whiskeredfolks emerged from their homes at the scarred one’s call. They quickly surrounded you, keeping a respectable distance, their eyes burning holes into your bare skin. Some had hunger in their gazes, others quiet rage, and a few were wide-eyed and curious.

You gazed across your whiskered audience, noting their muscular body shapes, and realized that most were males. You could count the females with both hands, and a sense of dread sank into your stomach. Instinctively, you knew why you were spared, but your mind screamed in denial.

The scarred one thumped his feet and swished his tail, “Tu Ce’ne phsi'asus ir i'asus i'a sarph si'ars!” His tone was exuberant, eager, and his tribe erupted in an excited murmur.

You furrowed your brows, but you could only understand Ce’ne, which meant both Mother and Father. But, who was Ce’ne?

He jostled you to your feet and kept a grip on you when you wobbled. The scarred one leaned over you, his jagged teeth beaming in the sunlight. “Na nasu zuhss ais zuazsu rius suhsssurr,”

You jumped as the entire tribe erupted in a loud roar of joy. Their eyes glittered with delight and you could feel your fear intensifying. You felt colder than you were back in the throes of blood loss from the night before. Your heart shuddered at the way they looked at you.

“sa szuhrssu zuhsais i'a Ce’ne sa phsi'ars ir sir!” the scarred one finished and clapped both of his large claws on your shoulders. He herded you closer to the mass, as if to showcase every inch of you.

Grant us cubs. That was all you could make out from what the scarred male said. Your eyes widened at the realization and a strangled whimper rose from your parched throat.

There was no escaping this, was there?

You couldn't move as the weight of the leader bore down on your shoulders, his talons cutting into your skin. Tears welled up in your eyes as a hooded female appeared with a strangely shaped bowl in her hands. You were shaking like a leaf, when she dipped her fingers into the dark, coagulated liquid within.

You sobbed the moment she smeared the tribe’s pattern onto your exposed chest, as if marking you as their property.

The Ce’ne. You were the Ce’ne.

—end

fictional translation: Canu zuhs nu i'ars nuus nil zuazsu. —Come with me and meet my people.

Tuil i'asu uhrthisus, ilai rsizuhs ail! —They are injured, you stupid boy!

Mil zuazsu, I si'ass izar suu! —My people, I call upon thee!

Tu Ce’ne phsi'asus ir i'asus i'a sarph si'ars! —The Mother/Father graced us after a long last! Na nasu zuhss ais zuazsu rius suhsssurr, sa szuhrssu zuhsais i'a Ce’ne sa phsi'ars ir sir! —No more will our people suffer childless, to dwindle without a mother/father to grant us cubs!

#my writing #monster's writing. 👹 #tetrophilia #exophilia #reader insert #long post #unedited #yandere #yandere imagine #yandere imagines #sfw #concept #beastfolks #beastfolk #whiskeredfolk #the jaguars #the scarred one #gn reader #more than one #tw: death #tw: confinement #tw: gore #tw: violence #tw: maneating #the jaguar tribe #the tribe #horror #tw injury

[thunderheadfred]

I’m gonna brag on myself for a minute because my self-confidence has been shit lately (thanks winter, for your annual crushing blow to my ego!) but I am, in fact, really good at language acquisition. Like, heretofore it was kind of a stupid superpower that I had never once thought to use for Good

which is why, when I had some kind of visitation from The Lort Almightee last summer and They were like "heyy how about you do something to tangibly improve the place where you live. and also start supporting tribal sovereignty. immediately"

I was like (falling out of my chair, trembling) "uhhhhhh I can learn languages weirdly fast??" and lo, God threw the newly-created UMN Dakota Language major directly in my face and Commanded, "GET TO WORK BITCH"

#true story #when people ask why I’m learning Dakota and want to help teach it as a non-native #I have to be like #quick vibe check #can I tell this person that I’m an atheist but God Told Me To Do It Anyway #or nah #the worst was the white nurse who gave me my covid vaccine at the university clinic #she was making small talk and asked about my major only to be like *how do they even know what Dakota sounds like anymore* #and I was like *DAKOTA PEOPLE ARE VERY MUCH AROUND AND HAVE BEEN SPEAKING DAKODIA THE WHOLE TIME THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT* #first speakers didn’t carry their language and culture through the horrors of the boarding school era(s) for you to disrepect them like thi