Day 8 - Sacred Ridge

05/07/24 • 12 min

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Content warning for discussion of genocide.

Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 7 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 6 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week we;re going to be looking at one of the many genocides that have been perpetrated against indigenous Americans. This, however, will not be the genocide you’re expecting. That will be a later episode. The Genocide at Sacred Ridge took place long before the arrival of European colonizers. Unfortunately, much like history’s oldest war in Jebel Sahaba, we don’t have a historical record of the events so much as a purely archaeological one. But, we’ll get to that shortly, first...

Let’s start things right off with the second installment of the Alchemist's Table. I hope you enjoyed last week’s potion. This week we’ve got another delightful brew called A Taste of Fall. Start with 2 oz of bourbon or rye whiskey, follow up with an ounce of maple syrup (make sure you’re using actual maple syrup, not pancake syrup) then finish with 4 oz of soft Apple Cider, shake well and strain into a wineglass.

With that out of the way let’s talk about the Puebloans. Puebloans is the modern taxonomy for many indigenous peoples who lived and live in and around southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. Now when looking at old cultures without a writing system, or at least without a surviving written record peoples tend to be classified into distinct categories based on the things they left behind. The artifacts we are able to find from archeological sites, how they built their homes, and any kind of art they left behind. There are a number of beautiful petroglyphs at sites like Mesa Verde, which is now a national park.

So, who are the Puebloan people and where did they come from? Well the Jargon tells us that They are believed to have developed, at least in part, from the Oshara tradition, which developed from the Picosa culture. But to understand what that means we have to know WHAT the OSHARA tradition is and what the Picosa culture is. The simple answer is that we define these cultures by the technology they used and divide them up somewhat arbitrarily in order to have distinct THINGS to talk about. Historical and archeological classification is all made up. None of it is REAL in any objective sense. It’s just that we as humans need some way to put things into little boxes so that we can study and understand it.

Puebloan prehistory was divided up into 8 periods at an archeological conference in Pecos , New Mexico in 1927. It’s called, you might be shocked to discover, the Pecos Classification. The Pecos classification didn’t include any dates, it just split up these prehistoric civilizations based on changes in architecture, art, pottery, and cultural remains.

So what defined the Puebloan people? Well, most notably it was the emergence of housing structures known as pueblos, the switch from woven baskets into pottery for storage, and the advent of farming. Once people began to develop these technologies and cultural markers they were considered to have transitioned from the Basketmaker III Era into the Pueblo I Era. This is also why no real dates were attached to these periods, because not all groups would enter them at the same time.

Hell, even more distinct historic eras, like the Middle Ages are arbitrary and were determined after the fact, as my old history professor Dr. Brian Regal used to say “no one just woke up on January 1st, 1500 and said “Welp, I guess the Middle Ages are done now!”

Now, Puebloan is the modern taxonomy for the people who lived and live in the Four Corners region. That being the area on a map of the modern United States where the corners of Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico all meet. However, that’s not the only name those people were known as. The Navajo referred to these peoples as the Anasazi, a term which means ancient enemy, although some say that the term actually translates as “those who do things differently. The Hopi use the term Hisatsinom for these people. Those most modern Puebloan people prefer the term Ancestral Puebloan.

The population of Puebloan people in the Four Corners region grew rapidly between the years 700 and 1130 CE due to an increased amount of rain making farming much more effective in the region allowing for greater food stocks. Though, it is interesting to note (a phrase I just realized I use a lot as a tangent transition) that study of skeletal remains from the region show increased fertility, NOT decreased mortality. SImply put, people still died at the same average rate, but more were born than were dying. Though, the order of magnitude increase of the local population was also influ...

Content warning for discussion of genocide.

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Day 7 - Justice Is Only a Concern Among Equals

Content warning for discussion of genocide.

I’ve got something special for you starting at the end of Week 1. It’s a new segment I’m going to call the Alchemist’s Table. Every Day I’m going to be sharing with you a cocktail recipe that I have invented. If you enjoy a nice cocktail and you aren’t driving to work feel free to make yourself one before sitting down for the rest of the episode.

For Day 7 we’re going to be enjoying the first cocktail I ever created. It’s called A Taste of Spring. It starts with 2 oz of Gin, I prefer gunpowder gin, but a London Dry will work just fine. Followed by 1 oz of elderflower liquor, 1 oz of lavender syrup, stir for about 30 seconds in ice before straining into a rocks glass over ice. And that, my friends, is a Taste of Spring. Enjoy.

Anyway, it’s time to head back to the West, and for this episode we have to travel back in time to the 5th century BCE for the Siege of Melos during the Peloponnesian War. IN a modern historical context we look at the Peloponnesian War as being between Sparta and Athens, and while this isn’t technically wrong, it’s also not as right as it could be.

The Peloponnesian War was fought between the Delian League, which was a confederacy of various Greek city-states with Atens in supreme control. The Delian League was created as a defensive alliance against the Persian Empire following the Second Persian Invasion of Greece (this is the invasion that included the famed Battle of Thermopylae). And the Peloponnesian League which was less a league and more an ancient world version of the Warsaw Pact, with Sparta (then called Lacadeamon) at the head with its various allied city states. See, around 550 BCE SParta got tired of having to conquer everyone and instead offered to NOT conquer them if they joined the League.

The Delian League got its name from the island of Delos where they would meet and where their treasury was held before being moved to Athens in 454 BCE. The Peloponnesian League got IT’S name from the peninsula at the southern tip of Greece, which is known as the Peloponnese Peninsula. The Peloponnesian League is something of a misnomer as its membership was not limited to that area of Greece.

But, I ramble, and so let us return to the Peloponnesian War. Why did Sparta and Athens, erstwhile allies against Xerxes I and the Persian Empire decide to go to war with each other?

The period between the Second Persian Invasion of Greece and the Peloponnesian War is sometimes known as the Pentecontaetia, a term which means “a period of 50 years” which refers to the 48 year period between 479 and 431 BCE. The Pentecontaetia saw the rise of Athens as one of the most prominent Greek City States, it saw the rise of Athenian democracy, and it saw the rise of tensions between Sparta and Athens. You can look at this period as somewhat similar to the rising tensions between Rome and Carthage. Sparta HAD been the most powerful Greek city-state, and now suddenly they had a rival and didn’t like that. Sparta was the Sasuke to Athens Naruto, the Vegeta to Athen’s Goku.

Following the flight of the Persian armies from Greece Athens began to rebuild the great walls around their city that had been lost to the Persian armies. Sparta, upon learning about this construction, asked them not to do that. But Athens rebuffed them, not wanting to put Athens effectively under the control of Sparta’s massive army. Another way we can view Athens and Sparta through the lens of Carthage and Rome is that Athens was vastly superior at sea, and Sparta was vastly superior on land, just as Carthage and Rome were, respectively. I’m taking bets now on who is going to win this war, assuming you don’t already know.

These tensions, which were further exacerbated by a helot revolt within Sparta would explode, though not terribly violently, during a 15 year conflict known as the First Peloponnesian War. This first war would end with the signing of the Thirty Years Peace treaty. This treaty, which would only last for 15 years, would solidify the Athenian and Spartan Empires and would cement Athens as a true powerhouse in the Aegean Sea.

Conflict between Athens and Corinth, a member of the Peloponnesian League, is what ultimately led to war. Athens and Corinth effectively fought a brief proxy war over control of the Corinthian colony of Potidea. Corinth, outraged that Athens had encouraged one of its colonies to rebel against their authority, u...

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Day 9 - This One Isn't About Star Wars

Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 9 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 8 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week we’re going to be looking at infighting within Christianity. There are many differing opinions within the faith on the whos and whats and whys and hows, and very oft en they decide to kill each other over these, ultimately minor, differences. The Cathar Genocide, often known as the Albegensian Crusade, was just such an event. It was a time when the Pope felt threatened by those who he deemed to be heretics and so decided to kill them.

But, first it’s time to craft our potions. Todays libations, gods I love that word, is called Melting Snow. Take two ounces of sake, 1 ounce of triple sec, 3-4 dashes of black lemon bitters, shake and pour into a rocks glass before gently pouring 1 tsp of grenadine syrup into it. The resulting drink should have the grenadine settle at the bottom initially making a lovely presentation. Though I’d mix it before actually imbibing.

With that out of the way let’s talk about who the Cathar were. The name Cathar comes from the Greek word katharoi, meaning “the pure ones”. Their other name, the Albegensians, comes from the fact that many adherents during the Crusade lived in or around the city of Albi. Catharism is described as a somewhat dualist, somewhat Gnostic heretical branch of Christianity. Though, it bears mentioning that both are likely exonyms and the followers of this particular faith often self identifies as Good Men, Good Women, or Good Christians.

So what is dualism and what is gnosticism? Well in the case of the Cathars they were pretty much the same thing. Dualism is the moral or spiritual belief that two fundamental concepts exist, which often oppose each other. Gnosticism draws a distinction between a supreme, and hidden God above all, and a lesser deity (sometimes called the demiurge) who created the material world. Consequently, Gnostics considered material existence flawed or evil, and held the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the hidden divinity, attained via mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment. Gnosticism preferred people to have personal knowledge and experience with the divine, something that threatened the power of the early Church.

Cathar cosmology identified two Gods. One who created the perfect spiritual world and the other, the demiurge who created the imperfect and sinful physical world. The demiurge is often identified as Yahweh and is referred to as Rex Mundi, King of the World. All visible matter, including the human body, was created or crafted by this Rex Mundi; matter was therefore tainted with sin. Under this view, humans were actually angels seduced by Satan before a war in heaven against the army of Michael, after which they would have been forced to spend an eternity trapped in the evil God's material realm. The Cathars taught that to regain angelic status one had to renounce the material self completely. Until one was prepared to do so, they would be stuck in a cycle of reincarnation, condemned to suffer endless human lives on the corrupt Earth.

Also, while they revered Jesus Christ, they also denied that he was ever a mortal man, instead believing that both he and Mary were Angels taking the semblance of a human form in order to teach our sin tainted flesh to grow closer to the purity of divinity. Other Cathar beliefs included the pescetarian diet, their view that women were pretty purely to tempt men away from divine purity and some Cathars believed that Eve had sex with Satan and gave birth to a race of giants who were all wiped out in the Great Flood. Cathars also rejected the Catholic priesthood, labeling its members, including the pope, unworthy and corrupted. Disagreeing on the Catholic concept of the unique role of the priesthood, they taught that anyone, not just the priest, could consecrate the Eucharistic host or hear a confession. There were, however, men selected amongst the Cathars to serve as bishops and deacons.

Now, while the Cathar Crusade took place over a 20 year period between 1209 and 1229, the persecution against them began almost as soon as they were founded. The Cathars were denounced as heretics by 8 separate church councils between 1022 and 1163. However the true troubles wouldn’t begin until 1208 when Pope Innocent III sent a legate named Pierre du Castelnau to chastise Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse for his lack of action against these heretical Cathars who lived on his land. Castelnau withdrew from Toulouse after 6 months of Raymond basically ignoring him. On January 15, 1208 Pierre was assassinated. Innocent suspected, and acted ...