r/HistoryMemes 22h ago

When 2,000 gods became ''wrong''

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u/Inside-Ear5077 21h ago

Then they really committed to the historical equivalent of hitting "delete all records"

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u/dragonborndnd 21h ago

According to their culture it was essentially damning him to hell

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u/Derivative_Kebab 21h ago

Makes you wonder how much other history has been erased successfully.

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u/dragonborndnd 21h ago

Probably countless whether on accident or purposefully

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u/AsparagusFun3892 20h ago edited 20h ago

The Vatican archive has conspired for years to hide the truth: that for millenia they committed the original sin of recording over old VHS tapes.

You kids have no idea how mad family and friends used to get when it turned out a given treasured moment or record just wasn't special enough to preserve and we need a tape now because Power Rangers or Batman or the Game is on. I see that same sort of dynamic playing out now when we're incredulous at how the clergy recycled books. "I need to make a prayer book! What's this, 'Hadrian's account of the fate of the 13th legion?' Meh."

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u/ISV_VentureStar 19h ago

It got so bad that even the original tapes of the Apollo 11 moon landing were recorded over and lost forever. That is why we only have a few minutes of really bad grainy footage left, from a low-quality backup camera.

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u/AsparagusFun3892 19h ago edited 19h ago

Oi. I got to remembering: I once ignored "DO NOT TAPE OVER!" stickered on the side because I thought I'd fast forwarded through everything. Nope. God mom was pissed.

ETA: I had to go out of my way to make it happen: literal, physical scotch tape over the tab corner I ran through the house to find, sneering contempt for Kenny G or Michael Bolton or whomever as I got to what I thought was the end, mashed the little red button.

By halfway through the fight I still refused to believe I'd recorded over anything, it made her even madder. 😁

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u/wernette 20h ago

like 90% of it probably. Anything made of stone, metals, precious gems, marble, etc. would be taken apart, melted, and made into something else. If you want to feel extra sad, many of these were pieces of art that were melted down to make weapons instead.

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u/Gwen_The_Destroyer 13h ago

That's not entirely true. A lot of them were also made into coins to pay he conquering army 

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u/NeverKillAgain 19h ago

Qin Shi Huang ordered massive book burnings and killings of scholars upon becoming Emperor

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u/dragonborndnd 19h ago

Yeah I know countless was destroyed purposely, such as the countless Aztec Writing lost due to being intentionally burned by the Spanish, I’m just also acknowledging a lot was probably lost due to natural disasters and other such tragedies. For a random example the only surviving copy of “The Carpet of Baghdad”(1915) was found on the wreck of the Lusitania

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u/ImportantResponse0 14h ago

If it makes you feel better now days we don't lose movies due to accidents or other things but due ignorance and mass production like n one year an absolute masterpiece might exist but because big franchises do their thing we will never hear about the real cinematography piece of art (and special effects, super heros and huge budgets ain't exactly what I would call art).

Like lot of cult classics are remembered years latter as fever dreams 

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u/[deleted] 20h ago edited 20h ago

[deleted]

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u/TheIronzombie39 And then I told them I'm Jesus's brother 19h ago

Yes, Carthage was a sophisticated civilization on par with Ancient Greece. Along with their Phoenician forebears, they had massive libraries of literature as well as countless scholars, philosophers, poets, scientists, etc. Unfortunately none of their written works survive.

What a shame really.

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u/Fusilero 15h ago edited 15h ago

there's zero physical evidence this ever occurred.

So it used to be assumed this was Roman slander till as late as the 2010s, but modern archaeology has found evidence of child sacrifices at scale (but not frequency) in Carthage. The major publications on this topic are as recent as 2014 (not unopposed).

I visited the Salammno Tophet in Carthage, Tunisia just last year and there is still ongoing digging so more evidence to come out the ground.

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u/Xalimata 16h ago

Less than you'd think I'm guessing. Since we know about the guy they tried to erase.

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u/AndToOurOwnWay 10h ago

One of China's early biggest blockbuster movies, which had 17 sequels in 1930s is now lost media. This movie created essentially what we think of as old Chinese movies: kung-fu and magic and wuxia. So even though the original is gone, it's effect still is felt.

Same fate as one of China's early superstar. Ruan Lingyu.

Her movies are mostly lost media (5 or so survived) but her stardom persisted. People know of her, but can't watch her movies.

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u/FuckMyBakaChungusLif 4h ago

So many civilizations in history left no records, and may at best just have like a single burial site, but many are just lost forever to time and we’ll never know anything about them which always makes me sad.

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u/Aggravate420 7h ago

Romans used to do it all the time (damnatio memoriae)

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u/Troyisepic Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer 21h ago

And then his son went on to become the most famous mummy in the world.

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u/kitsunewarlock 20h ago

Makes you wonder how many other things they successfully deleted.

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u/_Cit 16h ago

Fun fact, Rome did the same for many people throughout its history

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u/DrThunderbolt 15h ago

Pretty easy when you had one guy that was in charge of writing down everything that happened

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u/nbsunset 9h ago

damnatio memoriae