Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "History of The Byzantine Empire - Documentary" video.

God bless Poland
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Because people like uniforms and cool weapons and like to brag about their own country I guess. And people are interested in spreading political propaganda. Personally do I think history of religion is boring, while a person living in medieval Europe or ancient egypt would probably have thought that religion was more interesting than anything else about their own civilization. I am a nerd in economic history, but I understand if people think I am too materialistic if I only focus on money and ignore other things in this world. History of health and disease is also interesting. History of science is a largely forgotten field which I think deserves attention, since history tells us that there are no school of thought that is iffallible and many scientists today treat scientific fact as something that cannot be questioned - the very same way that religous fundamentalists see religious dogma. Cultural history and how the average joe lived his life in the past could also be interesting sometimes. I would also like to study odd societies more when I have the time. For example Ptolemian Egypt which had one of the most opressive economic policies in history.
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There were jews christians zorastians muslims and believers of ancient greek gods, and they lived everyware during the late antiquity and early middle ages. Vikings vistited ireland, spain, france, russia, ukraine, and byzantium. Muslim and jewish traders were active in Bohemia. The Khazaks in modern day Russia converted to judaism. And there were jews in Jerusalem and jews in modern day Saudiarabia. There was also jews in Mesopotamia left there after the jewish capitivity in Babylon. Christians also lived in Iraq, Persia, Saudiarabia, North Africa and a few enclaves were even so distant as in India. The religion tended to get local variants, and the latin christians and the Byzantian christians started to despise each other over minor religious differences. In the 4th century was there a church meeting at Nicea where a bunch of theologians and politicians were assembeled and they designed a standardized version of the Bible and decided to burn all books they didn't deem to fit into the book collection known as the Bible. And everyone who disagreed with them was called a heretic and could suffer a terrible fate. But Christians who lived in Persia had their own interpretation of christianity, and the intolerant Byzantines would murder those heretics during their military campaigns into Persia. So it was obviously not so that a christian group therefore would prefer a christian ruler, but instead did many welcome the first muslim rulers over the middle east because of their religious tolerance. But later on would of course muslims start to behave the same way when Muhammed died and a war of succession occured a century later. The muslim world got a divide between shia and sunni muslims and non-muslims became encouraged to convert. The jews aslo had their fair share of religious intolerance. The jews in Saudiarabia commited genocides against the Christians living there so they would have no competition over winning peoples souls. And the jews in Jerusalem was also happy when the Byzantines lost control over the city over to the Persians. The jews helped muhammed wage his first wars. But they were also some of his victims, as Muhammed himself behaved like ISIS does today, when he commited a genocide on the jewish tribe Banu Qurayza living in Arabia. 800 people were killed. Muhammed was basicly just a typical Djinghis Khan type of guy typical for the medieval times. He commited genocide, he plundered, and he thought that it was okay to treat people of a different faith badly. And ISIS today are just doing the same things he did during the 600s - they kill all men in a village, they loot, and Christian and jewish girls are forced to become sex slaves and forced to marry a man who murdered their husband, brothers, father and male friends. Prophet Muhammed himself took a 15 year old girl - Mariyah -as a sex slave for the pervy old man. And Muhammed was also a man who bought, traded and sold black slaves. So he was a typical man of his time. The jews in Bohemia, the Vikings, and the Genoese christians were more than happy to sell other people as slaves as well. And slavery in the middle east was even more common than in Rome during its peak. (Source: The silk roads - Peter Frankopan)
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True xD But I also guess one could say that slavs (and especially the Russians) have their own particular ways compared to the west-European French, Germans, Britons, Dutch, and Italians which are considered the core of Europe. I mean there are so differences in worldviews, culture and values and such. I am not saying the slavic values are inferior or anything... because personally do I believe that all cultures have their upsides and downsides.. I would not say east-European culture is just a little way different. Eastern Europe does for example not happily involve itself with SJW nonsense and its history has been different from the experience of west-European countries. Poland have never killed native americans and enslaved negroes and have thus no reason to feel white guilt. Instead have the country been a victim of opression from other peoples, and slavs in the south east were sold as slaves and later on lived under Ottoman occupation instead of having their own christian homeland. Persia is likewise a much different creature from arabia, even if islam tend to destroy the unique beauty of a particular culture. Instead of having women dressing up in ugly black clothes that cover their entire bodies and banning music, it would be much more interesting if the islamic countries freed themselves and cultivated their own culture instead. And this is particulary true of the rich Persian culture. People should abandon the boring islamic uniform and instead wear colorful dresses as women in Somalia did before the country went islamic in the 1980s and the Persians should do the same.
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@lavoenterprise610 "French, Germans, Dutch and Briton are considered the core of Europe by what standards? Aren't the Greeks and the Romans the founders of Western Civilization?" Well I guess I have to give you right here. Italy (which also are the ex-romans) are probably the country which have been most important to European culture. Especially when it comes to the papacy and Christianity which was enormously important for many centuries. And the Roman heritage on laws, governence, medical terms etc are also hard to overestimate. But Italy remains part of the core countries of western Europe in my opinion... Overall do I divide Europe into east and west just like the historian Perry Anderson does in his book "passages from antiquity to feudalism". Historically have there always been a difference between east and west. And the founding countries of the EU could be said to be the core of the west. Recently Europe was divided into Nato and East-bloc. And before that was Europe divided into other lines such as the "2nd serfdom". And before then was east and west divided into Catholic and Orthodox christianity. The bubonic plague was a disaster for western Europe, while eastern Europe didn't suffer as much. Western Rome fell apart from the barbarian invasion while the Byzantine empire survived despite it had to deal with more severe attacks. And west Rome and East Rome always was different - west was more rural and had huge slave colonies - "The Latifund system" and people spoke latin. In Eastern Rome slavery took other forms than huge slave plantages, and people lived in big cities and spoke Greek.. and the Greek civilization treated their rulers as demi-Gods a bit like rulers of the middle east. Western Rome was richer as long as the military victories could provide the western slave system with the workers it needed, but then when labour shortages came then the west started to become a backwater. West would still remain stronger and more important for a long time despite the superior riches of the east - and the many Roman civil wars which were all won by the western side despite the larger numbers of eastern legions mobilized. And during the glorious days of ancient Greece, then Greece was clearly more sophisticated than the rest of Europe. The many islands provided excellent access to water transports which enabled trade and imports of huge amounts of food so it was possible to build huge cities in Greece in ways which was not possible in the European inland. Perry writes: "The colossal importance of the sea for trade can be judged from the simple fact that it was cheaper in the epoch of Diocletian to ship wheat from Syria to Spain - one end of the Mediterranean to the other - than to cart it 75 miles over land."
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