• Skua@kbin.earth
        20·
        11 days ago

        I would say yes, just a very short-lived one. I’d struggle to come up with a definition of an empire that excluded Nazi Germany short of just arbitrarily imposing a minimum required lifespan. It was definitely a large, powerful, expansionist state that conquered other areas in order to subjugate them for the benefit of a metropole. The Reichskommisariats were basically intended as colonial administrations, not to mention client states like Slovakia

  • Mister Neon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    231·
    11 days ago

    I’m glad I got included as the orange speech bubble.

    Today is Chicome Coatl (7 Snake) in the Tonalpohualli. Party on nerds.

      • sga@lemmings.worldEnglish
        3·
        11 days ago

        one could make an argument that mughal empire is mongol empire, in the same sense that byzantine is roman (but not really)

        babar, first (almost undisputed) ruler of mughal empire was descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan.

        • Skullgrid@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          11 days ago

          Unfortunately, I’m not indian enough to feel the same connection to the mughals as I do the mongols.

          • sga@lemmings.worldEnglish
            6·
            11 days ago

            understandable.

            I do not feel that connected to any empire, but if you talk in today terms, what is india, was not really a 1 big soverign entity. It was much like todays europe - tonnes of states. One could argue mughals were the most recent empire under which a very large part of current India was under (almost entirety of north and west and central). they had a larger cultural impact. Our current most spoken language (hindi) did not exist, lets just say, 200 years ago. there were tonnes of derivaties from older sanskrit and dravidian roots (european equivalent would be romanic and germanic roots). what mughals brought (not them, it existed before as brought by trade and previous empire (tipu sultante, which is very small, but still some what important)) were the languages usually used in islamic world - arabic and persian (farsi as we call it). from these older languages and their amalgamations we got “hindustani” . Consider it parent of hindi and urdu (most spoken languages in northern india, and pakistan). these 2 languages are in some sense same - 2 speakers can communicate orally, but not in writing, because urdu reatined the arabic script, and hindi retained the devanagri script (sanskrit). Mughals had a large enough impact on india, something our current administration really tries to downplay, and paint in very bad light. Yes, they were not the ideal, utopic, do-no-evil kingdom. But no empire has been that, ever. they were very comparable in terms of other empires in terms of social standards.

  • CptBread@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    11 days ago

    Wait… You’re only supposed to get one? Do I return the others somehow? Is there any support email or phone I can contact?

  • shneancy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    11 days ago

    i was assigned Ancient Egypt pretty early on, i made my mum read to me things like the process of mummification for bedtime stories

    • Soapbox@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      10 days ago

      Same here. By around 3rd grade I had taught myself how to phonetically read/write hieroglyphs. So I would write all sorts of English stuff in hieroglyphs, but I still couldn’t actually understand ancient Egyptian.

      • shneancy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        10 days ago

        somehow my brain did a flip and i did the same but with nordic runes (elder futhark to be exact). now i’m catching up and trying to learn some ancient egyptian in my free time

  • Skua@kbin.earth
    13·
    11 days ago

    Mongol guy’s font change has been living in my head all afternoon. Why is it only him? Why does getting the Mongol empire make him start speaking in a Charles-Rennie-Mackintosh-looking font? Like, the artist obviously likes to play it loose with typefaces in the rest of the comic too, but this one guy seems like the centre of the typographical attention and I do not understand the choices made

      • Skua@kbin.earth
        7·
        11 days ago

        I’d argue it is the same thing, it’s just that the Roman Empire lasted so long and it was changing the whole time, so it’s often necessary to compartmentalise it to a degree

        • hansolo@lemmy.todayEnglish
          2·
          10 days ago

          Then why call it the Eastern Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire if it’s the same thing?

          Sure, splitting the Empire in 286 was simply a practical matter, but by the time Constantine I moved the capitol and changed the state religion, just because they still called themselves “Romans” day to day until the Ottomans showed up in 1453, doesn’t automatically mean they’re the same empire. There were 2 emporors and 2 courts, effectively 2 separate governments. In very technical terms, the split was a legal loophole to maintain a “single” empire on paper for their own egos and to avoid conflict. In practice and in hindsight, they’re 2 different things.

          It’s a bit like saying that any Commonwealth county is the same as the UK. It’s not truly. Let’s imagine that just before WWI, King George V decided to pick up and move to Australia and start calling it “The Southern United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,” and leave another family member in charge as “co-regent” in London. Then watch as WWI tears Europe apart and the German Empire 50 years later invades London and takes it and colonial countries scatter away from George V’s grip. Does the British Empire still exist? I would say no. What say you? Other than this would make some great alternate historical fiction.

          • Skua@kbin.earth
            3·
            10 days ago

            Then why call it the Eastern Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire if it’s the same thing?

            Because it’s helpful to compartmentalise something with so much history. We can refer to Capetian France and Valois France even though they’re both still France, for example. It is unusual for such compartmentalisation to be used with a geographic aspect rather than (only) temporally, but the Roman Empire was unusually big, especially for its time

            The two were, of course, independent from one another for basically all practical purposes. I just also think that both are equally the meaningful continuation of the united empire

            In very technical terms, the split was a legal loophole to maintain a “single” empire on paper for their own egos and to avoid conflict. In practice and in hindsight, they’re 2 different things.

            Surely if we are going with the principle that only one of the two halves of the empire is the real continuation, it ought to be the one that kept the capital and administrative structure of the unified empire? Or if neither is the real continuation, did the empire die under Diocletian and then Constantine ruled over a separate entity altogether after the end of the tetrarchy?

            Does the British Empire still exist? I would say no.

            To keep the analogy accurate here, we’d have to make a few changes. The British monarchy does not call itself the “Southern UK” - you pointed out yourself that the Romans did not call the ERE a different thing - and it’d also have to keep control of a substantial chunk of the colonies when Britain falls to Germany. I do think that, in that case of George V moving to Australia and continuing to rule, say, New Zealand, India, and South Africa from there, I would still consider it the same empire. This exact situation actually pretty much happened in real life with Portugal and Brazil, it just didn’t happen in advance of the fall of Portugal and didn’t last very long.

            Other than this would make some great alternate historical fiction.

            I think one of the big HOI4 mods, Kaiserreich, actually does do this! Although as I understand it, it was due to a communist revolution after a stalemated WWI. I do not know the details as I’ve never played it, I only found out because I had been chatting about ideas for an alt history WWI outcome with a friend and we found out that we had basically accidentally come up with Kaiserreich’s version of Europe

  • Olhonestjim@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    11 days ago

    Only since the last season of Cosmos got me obsessed with the Indus Valley Civilization. I’m over 40.

    • Skua@kbin.earth
      4·
      11 days ago

      This is arguably more of a Sumer question, but how do you feel about the theory that the Indus Valley Civilisation can be identified as the Meluhha that the early Mesopotamians traded with?

      • Olhonestjim@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        10 days ago

        I’m optimistic about it. It seems likely given the types of minerals found in Mesopotamian artifacts can be traced to mines near the Indus.

        • Skua@kbin.earth
          3·
          10 days ago

          That’s more or less where I’m at too. I do have to recognise some personal bias though. Partly because I don’t know that much about the Indus Valley Civilisation. Partly because for some reason I find it quite frustrating to not have a “proper” name for a society when talking about them, even though I completely understand on a rational level that we just don’t have enough information to know what they called themselves

          Still, I totally understand how someone could become fascinated by this society in particular. We have so much evidence but never quite enough for solid answers in so many cases. It’s a tantalising mystery

          • Olhonestjim@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            10 days ago

            It drives me crazy that we haven’t translated their written language, and know none of their stories, none of their heros, philosophers, or rulers. What we have gleaned from their artifacts suggests a marvelous society rich with tales, and every single one of them is currently lost. I need to go visit their cities one day.

  • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    10 days ago

    Plebs are obsessed with empires.

    Level up and start being interested in ideologies, mythologies, languages and in larger terms, cultures.

  • Apeman42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    11 days ago

    Mine just said “the Daevites”, and the walls started dripping blood when I opened it. Should I be concerned?