That's incredible, hopefully they apply the same methods in Petra and other spots, I'm sure they will if Ankor and Egypt are next.
History/Archaeology Thread
- Thread starter SteveJ
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Something that people don't really realize, is that the Munich agreement, is the cause of the Molotov Ribbentrop agreement, and they are, in effect, the same type of agreement. Non aggression pacts.
The next time someone says Hitler and Stalin were allied, you should play along and according to their logic, correctly remind them that they were allied only after Britain and France allied with Hitler.
Three years of research in the Black Sea have produced astonishing results, including the remains of 65 vessels, one thought to be ancient Greek
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-on-black-sea-shipwrecks-discovering-our-past
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-on-black-sea-shipwrecks-discovering-our-past
The joint German/Russian invasion of Poland wasn't a non aggression pact though.
No. It was dividing Europe up into spheres of influence. It also wasn't exactly "joint". The USSR invaded 2 and a half weeks after the invasion began. Poland was already defeated as a military force by the time the Soviets crossed the border. It was the ultimate in opportunism. They waited for war to be decided, and then marched in and took half the country. Had Poland held out, I think it's very doubtful the Soviets would have invaded. They seemed to be waiting for the outcome to be decided before committing.
Just like Churchill did with Stalin in the Percentages Agreement. Which resulted in the UK "invading" Greece to put down a communist uprising and Stalin didn't lift a finger to help. You cannot be so naive to think that when Stalins overtures to form an alliance AGAINST Hitler were rejected, and not only rejected, but repaid with a non-aggression pact in which England and France gave Hitler the Sudetenland, that he was going to say "Darnit, what do I do now".
Stalin knew Hitler would attack him sooner or later. Agreeing to divide Poland between them, while crass, is no less crass than England and France giving the Sudetenland to Germany, land they didn't own. It was an agreement to postpone war/maintain peace. In the end the USSR returned the majority of the territory it took when it defeated Germany, something that it absolutely did not have to do given the military realities on the ground. I might add, that this was territory that the USSR had legal claim to, that they returned. They could have kept it, nobody was going to make them give it back, nobody could. The Red Army in Europe at the end of the war, was so much more powerful and capable than the allied forces in Europe, that the Red Army held all the cards at that point, and they gave the majority of it back.
Both guys were terrible dictators, but let's not rewrite history to suit ourselves. Stalin didn't seek an alliance with Hitler. He sought an alliance against him. He agreed to a non-aggression pact, because the countries he was seeking an alliance with, formed their own non-aggression pact with Hitler while he was seeking that alliance. That's the timeline, and yea, when Hitler said "Hey, split Poland with me" of course Stalin was going to say "uh, ok", because he knew eventually they were going to be fighting, and that just gave him more room to maneuver.
On top of what @Nucks is saying, let's not forget that this all happened not even two decades after the western allies all had armies in Russia fighting to put down the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War. They weren't exactly predisposed to trusting France and Britain after that, which coupled with the Munich agreement to push Stalin to attempt to deal with Germany. On top of that again there's obviously Stalin's desire to dominate Poland.
I took this to be the crux of your original argument and it is this that is wrong. England and France didn't give anything, they agreed to take no action themselves at that point, which is quite different from agreeing to actually invade somewhere yourself.
Agreed. I can't remember any examples but I believe there are some war memorials in Britain to 'The Great War, 1914-1919'.
I guess it would come down to what constitutes being an ally.
Yes, The Nazi-Soviet pact came after the Munich agreement but it also came after Britain and France had given and reiterated their guarantee on Polish independence.
So any agreement to jointly invade and divide Poland would start the second world war while the purpose of the Munich agreement was a forlorn attempt to prevent it.
So those agreements can't really be seen as the same.
Also it should be noted that it wasn't just Poland that Stalin and Hitler divided up between them but also Eastern Europe and it marked the start of co-operation in defeating the Western European powers which Stalin helped Germany to do.
So they were Allies and the reasoning behind Stalin's decision to become Hitler's ally doesn't question that fact.
England and France told Hitler, you can have the Sudetenland if that is where you stop. I'm shocked you're not aware of what the Munich Agreement was. You can spin it however you want. France and England make an agreement behind the Czech's back, to give Hitler free reign to attack them and annex the most militarily significant part of the country. It would be like, if a home invader was about to break into your home, and your neighbors show up with guns and say "Hey, easy, you can kick in the front door and stand inside, but promise you won't run through the house with a sickle killing everyone".
The Munich Agreement, is the same thing as the MR Pact. A Non-aggression pact. They made a deal to prevent war. France and England made a deal to prevent war. The details of the deal don't really matter, and the Munich Agreement is hardly any less fecked up than the details of the MR pact. Hitler feared Soviet intervention in Poland. Yes, Stalin also took a piece of the pie after all was said and done. I don't know exactly how those negotiations went down, however I do know, Stalin and the USSR were backed into a corner. They had everything to lose by not coming to terms with Hitler. England and France? Had nothing to lose. They were gambling with other peoples money. "Tut tut, Czechoslowhatvia? Be a good lad old Hitlerpoo and don't attack anyone else". Meanwhile, in Moscow, Stalin is reading/listening to Hitler's manifesto and speeches over the last 2 decades and shitting himself knowing he is next. Did Stalin ask for half of Poland? Strategically smart. Did Hitler offer half of Poland? Strategically stupid. Stalin got a buffer between himself and Germany, he created more space. It might have helped win him the war in the end.
Can you inform me of the treaty, by which Stalin and Hitler formalized military protection and cooperation?
We have the Pact of Steel. The formal alliance of Italy and Germany. We have the Tripartite Pact, which included Japan into this formal agreement of military cooperation and protection. Where is the Soviet/German formal declaration of military cooperation and protection?
Oh, there wasn't one. Stalin and Hitler did not form an alliance. Or are you suggesting that Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin formed a formal military alliance in post war, with the "Percentages Agreement" in which the two leaders sat down and divided Europe up between the two of them?
Having an agreement over spheres of influence, is not a military alliance, fella. A military alliance has a very strict definition. They certainly had an agreement, the USSR would have a free hand in the Baltics, Bessarabia, and would occupy Poland once Germany defeated the primary military resistance. Cooperation? Mutual defense? Never happened. They did not have any form of military alliance, be it a general alliance, or a defensive alliance. A treaty of non-aggression is not an alliance, and certainly it is not a military alliance of any shape of form.
I can't even believe I am having this discussion, the fake news, facts aren't facts, words don't mean what they mean, era has somehow infiltrated historical debate. Alliance means something. It has a strict definition. You cannot make up the definition to suit you.
Yeah, that must be it. Debate over, good luck.
I have no idea who that guy is, but he's wrong.
Yes I can, it was the Molotov Ribbentrop pact and the subsequent protocols often secret between Hitler and Stalin.
Lets be clear here these were two absolute dictators they did not need nor did they abide by any agreement unless it suited them and they announced only the parts of their agreements which they decide they wanted public or should we say those which helped their propaganda. You might fall for that but we now know as historical fact they had decided to start the second World war by invading Poland and then exactly how far the German forces would go and how far Russian forces would go. Also how they would divide up Eastern Europe. It was not as you suggest happenstance.
Russia then helped Germany to defeat France and supplied huge amounts of raw materials much of which Germany later used to invade Russia.
I don't know what part of this you struggle with? Russian was happy to see Germany win right up until Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded Russia. Or to put it more simply they were allies right up to Barbarossa.
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Thomas Becket’s bloody tunic returns to Canterbury 850 years after he died
Vatican to send back historic relic worn by archbishop as he was brutally murdered
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...yr-murder-cathedral-rome-pope-relic-pepinster
Vatican to send back historic relic worn by archbishop as he was brutally murdered
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...yr-murder-cathedral-rome-pope-relic-pepinster
Loan back.
Can’t trust the English to hold on to it. They might destroy it, like they did with the rest of Becket’s things.
Can’t trust the English to hold on to it. They might destroy it, like they did with the rest of Becket’s things.
Except it didn't. It laid out an agreement in which they wouldn't attack each other. When did the USSR come to the aid of Germany? Or when did Germany come to the aid of the USSR? Are you suggesting that the USA was in alliance with Germany? As it was supplying Germany with materiel for their war machine right up until about 1940? I'm not sure why this needs to be explained. Trade != military alliance. Joint exercises != military alliance. Military alliance = if you get attacked, and or, if you attack someone, we will declare war in support of you. NATO = military alliance. Pact of Steel = alliance. WARSAW Pact = alliance. MR Pact = non aggression pact. There is a difference between, if you declare war on France, we will also declare war on France, and, we agree not to attack each other, yet.
What happened with the USSR and Germany, was a deal of convenience. In the pre-war years, Germany offered military expertise/industrial expertise/scientific expertise/etc/etc in exchange for access to territory in the USSR to carry out military training, which was often joint in nature. Why? They were two globally ostracized nations. The USSR was communist, and ostracized by the rest of the world. Germany was under the sanctions of Versailles, and had to end run those sanctions to do any military preparation and training.
Stalin and Hitler both knew, that eventually Hitler was going to attack Stalin. They both knew it. However, in the mean time they needed each other to prepare their countries for what was going to happen.
So again, no serious, or even real, or even amateur historian thinks that the MR-Pact was a military alliance. It wasn't. It was an agreement that allowed both countries to pursue their own foreign policy by securing their mutual border. You say the USSR helped Germany invade France? How exactly is that? In 1938/39 Stalin begged France and the UK for a military alliance against Hitler, offered to move a massive military force through Poland to the German border.
Stalin was also, far from happy to see Hitler winning in Europe. It was his worst case scenario, for Hitler to actually win. I'm sensing a thread here, and if I pull on it, I almost feel like you're going to come out with something like, Stalin was happy to see Hitler win, because it weakened Europe for his eventual invasion. Stalin wasn't an internationalist. He killed internationalism. That ends that right there. Was Stalin happy to see Germany fighting? Sure. Why? Hitler since about 1921 has been screaming about destroying socialism, communism, and jews. He then went on to outline his plan for the USSR in a little book called Mein Kampf. Hitler bogged down in a war with the west is good for Stalin, who feared yet another invasion from Europe, and Hitler had all but said "I'm coming for you", then he became the leader of Germany, and that threat became very real. Hitler rampaging through Europe, winning wars in weeks, was not good for Stalin, because each victory brought Hitler closer to having secured his borders allowing him to invade the USSR, his number 1 goal.
I don't really understand how this is difficult for you. Where did you go to school? What is your education. Do you understand that words often have specific meanings and implications? You saying Russia and Germany were in an alliance before Barbarossa, is literally, and I cannot emphasize this enough, fantasy, fake news, not real, made up.
Is there any need for this? It's a difference of interpretation, what's anybody's education got to do with it? In this article Timothy Snyder - PHD from Oxford, Professor at Yale - refers to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as an 'alliance' multiple times. WW2 is not my area but this is clearly a subject of legitimate debate, not some outrageous, beyond-the-pale claim.
Still at it I see. I suspect you've actually got some good points to make but you're putting them forward in such a childish manner they're wasted.
1,It laid out the way they would both attack Poland as allies, that was coming to Germany's aid.
The Russians invaded Poland and annexed half of it as per their agreement as allies in that enterprise with Hitler. Historically that is without question or doubt. They also agreed how they would supress the Polish people, liquidate Polish leadership and military personnel and co-operated in mass deportation of political prisoners who they liquidated. As per the underlined you said it, if you declare war on Poland we declare war on Poland that is a alliance.
They also drew new borders right across eastern Europe including the agreed planned Russian annexation of Finland and parts of Romania and who would control the Baltic states etc. etc.
Then you have to factor in the quotas of supplies of raw materials promised in the pact and dispatched to Germany from Russia which helped Germany defeat France.
I don't understand your bile here at all.
2, A Million Russian soldiers moving into Poland I wonder why the British and French didn't go for that idea its not like he would just leave them there and occupy Poland, oh wait he did just that in the end didn't he?
3, Communism was though you don't think all the communist party faithful were at all affected by this pact?
You conflate two issues, were there reasons Stalin became Hitler's Ally. Yes there were.
That doesn't help you with whether they were allies it undermines your reasoning against the idea.
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He had the ‘intel inside’ patch
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Vlad the Impaler saved us, or we'd all be walking around with stupid moustaches stabbing each other in the buttocks now. Three cheers for good old Vlad.
Scott of the Antarctic: the lies that doomed his race to the pole
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/sep/24/scott-antarctic-lies-race-pole
The book “The Coldest March” by Susan Solomon is an interesting reappraisal of Scott after he went in public perception from British hero to bungling amateur. He was extremely unlucky in that he faced an exceptionally cold winter even by Antartic standards, which, among other things, meant that the friction caused by pulling the sledge runners did not melt the snow to create a glide effect. It was like pulling the sledges through sand.
They didn't invade Poland as allies.
The USSR declared war, 2 and a half weeks later. There was no formal military cooperation between them. They agreed to divide poland up, but that was the extent of their cooperation. If they were allies, why didn't the USSR declare war on France and England and the commonwealth, when those three entities declared war on Germany? You're proposing that this was a general military alliance, and that the USSR invaded Poland in support of its military ally Germany.
Why didn't the UK, France and the commonwealth declare war on the USSR following their invasion of Poland? The answer is complicated, but it is also kind of simple. The simple reason is this, Poland was defeated by Germany, and the powers opposing Germany saw the Soviet occupation of Poland for what it was, opportunism, not a manifest example of an alliance between the USSR and Hitler. The entire idea that Stalin and Hitler formed a military alliance is a non-starter contemporaneously. The idea is born out of post WW2 cold war era propaganda. At the time nobody thought it was an alliance, and this idea only came out of hardline cold warriors.
Here is the pact in all its glory.
As you can see, this is not a military alliance. However, you can see stipulations in article III and V about the establishment of their spheres of influence, or regional interests. In the case of the USSR, the Baltics, Finland, and Eastern Poland. In the case of Germany, almost everything else in Europe. Having an agreement to split Poland between them, isn't evidence of a military alliance. A military alliance has to be formalized, and announced, or else it has no impact. So again, I ask, where did the USSR and Nazi Germany formalize a military alliance? The MR Pact is, as I have said, a non-aggression pact. An agreement to not attack the other.
As you and other commentators have said, yes, it helped Germany, it also helped the USSR, but establishing economic relations, securing a border militarily, are not equivalent to a military alliance. If this is the case, then the United States of America, due to the ongoing trade it had with Germany into the 1940's, was a formal military ally of Germany, which we all know is absurd. Interests can align, economically, politically, without a formal alliance. The USSR and Germany had a complicated post WW1 relationship, especially after the rise of Hitler. In which the countries loathed each other, but needed it each other because they had no one else to lean on. This doesn't make them allies.
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There was also a secret protocol to the pact, revealed only after Germany's defeat in 1945,[88] although hints about its provisions were leaked much earlier, e.g., to influence Lithuania.[89] According to the protocol, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland were divided into German and Soviet "spheres of influence".[88] In the north, Finland, Estonia and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere.[88] Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its "political rearrangement": the areas east of the Pisa, Narev, Vistula and San rivers would go to the Soviet Union, while Germany would occupy the west.[88] Lithuania, adjacent to East Prussia, would be in the German sphere of influence, although a second secret protocol agreed to in September 1939 reassigned the majority of Lithuania to the USSR.[90] According to the protocol, Lithuania would be granted its historical capital Vilnius, which was under Polish control during the inter-war period. Another clause of the treaty stipulated that Germany would not interfere with the Soviet Union's actions towards Bessarabia, then part of Romania;[88] as a result, not only Bessarabia, but Northern Bukovina and Hertza regions too, were occupied by the Soviets, and integrated into the Soviet Union.
At the signing, Ribbentrop and Stalin enjoyed warm conversations, exchanged toasts and further addressed the prior hostilities between the countries in the 1930s.[91] They characterized Britain as always attempting to disrupt Soviet–German relations, stated that the Anti-Comintern pact was not aimed at the Soviet Union, but actually aimed at Western democracies and "frightened principally the City of London [i.e., the British financiers] and the English shopkeepers".[92]
So above from wiki, it is not controversial.
It should be clear to even an idiot that the published document wasn't the totality of the agreement between Stalin and Hitler because they were not exactly open governments.
To rely on the open document which as above was then thought, and is now known to be a sham discredits your argument.
Also for example you mention in a previous post, the approach of Stalin to secure a pact with the west and how the west turned Stalin down so forcing him to make an accommodation with Hitler. You don't mention Stalin's demand to be allowed to enter polish territory without Polish consent which the western powers would not agree to.
Now I don't think these are issues you are unaware of, so I reluctantly conclude that you are deliberately trying to mislead people in this thread.
I take your talk about a cold war western anti soviet bias as a flam because the post war soviet cover up is far more important. They knew exactly what Stalin and Hitler agreed and have been trying hide the facts for decades.
Until Hitler attacked them they were allied to him and happy to supply him and support him in the conquest of western Europe.
It should be clear to even an idiot that the published document wasn't the totality of the agreement between Stalin and Hitler because they were not exactly open governments.
To rely on the open document which as above was then thought, and is now known to be a sham discredits your argument.
Also for example you mention in a previous post, the approach of Stalin to secure a pact with the west and how the west turned Stalin down so forcing him to make an accommodation with Hitler. You don't mention Stalin's demand to be allowed to enter polish territory without Polish consent which the western powers would not agree to.
Now I don't think these are issues you are unaware of, so I reluctantly conclude that you are deliberately trying to mislead people in this thread.
I take your talk about a cold war western anti soviet bias as a flam because the post war soviet cover up is far more important. They knew exactly what Stalin and Hitler agreed and have been trying hide the facts for decades.
Until Hitler attacked them they were allied to him and happy to supply him and support him in the conquest of western Europe.
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I don't know if any of you followed or saw this story in the news, I know the guy that was involved in this site and good on him for making the best of a poor situation that highlights the difficult line between public engagement with archaeology and also when sites become archaeology and when they don't.
Basic gist: Found stone circle that was very similar to other stone circles, spoke to press about it. Farmer sees press release, tells them that it's not old, he put it there. Archaeologist becomes meme.
It happens way more often than not I reckon, especially in commercial archaeology when people are working from various specialisms and you have much higher chance of coming across artefacts from differing time periods that people aren't too clear on. I was on a site where we found a piece of metal that looked very similar to the body of an anti-aircraft shell. Manager/Director at company had a look and thought that it well could be -> people posting on instagram about it -> finds specialist takes one look at it -> "That's a victorian lamp-post". Ah.
Basic gist: Found stone circle that was very similar to other stone circles, spoke to press about it. Farmer sees press release, tells them that it's not old, he put it there. Archaeologist becomes meme.
It happens way more often than not I reckon, especially in commercial archaeology when people are working from various specialisms and you have much higher chance of coming across artefacts from differing time periods that people aren't too clear on. I was on a site where we found a piece of metal that looked very similar to the body of an anti-aircraft shell. Manager/Director at company had a look and thought that it well could be -> people posting on instagram about it -> finds specialist takes one look at it -> "That's a victorian lamp-post". Ah.
Remains of hundreds of slain victims discovered at former Belarus Jewish ghetto
(Source: Times of Israel)
(Source: Times of Israel)
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A New History of Arabia, Written in Stone
How strange rocks—and an obscure language—are changing a decades-old academic consensus.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-new-history-of-arabia-written-in-stone
How strange rocks—and an obscure language—are changing a decades-old academic consensus.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-new-history-of-arabia-written-in-stone
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Red Lady to Richard III: Britain's 10 best buried treasures
https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...d-treasures-ranked-tutankhamun-southend-saxon
https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...d-treasures-ranked-tutankhamun-southend-saxon
Go for gold! Vintage portraits of California prospectors – in pictures
https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...portraits-of-california-gold-rush-in-pictures
Young gold-rush prospectors stare down the camera in these striking daguerreotypes and tintypes of the 1850s, from a time before California boomtowns became ghost towns
https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...portraits-of-california-gold-rush-in-pictures
Did Stone Age cavemen talk to each other in symbols?
Previously overlooked patterns in the cave art of southern France and Spain suggest that man might have learned written communication 25,000 years earlier than we thought:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/mar/11/cave-painting-symbols-language-evolution
Previously overlooked patterns in the cave art of southern France and Spain suggest that man might have learned written communication 25,000 years earlier than we thought:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/mar/11/cave-painting-symbols-language-evolution