I’m convinced humans have some kind of natural inherent fetishization of “old knowledge”.
If it happened outside of living memory they somehow knew more or had special magical knowledge we just don’t understand or can’t interpret from our perspective. The older, the more true people can be convinced that it is.
As if there is some kind of “platonic ideal” of thoughts or ideas from which all others are derived from, where the further back something back it is, it MUST be more true
No doubt, I’m sure if we pulled up some 2k yo racist screed against Picts or whatever, we’d be like ahhh ancient wisdom we must treasure it, whereas now I just block people lol
The Romans did this very thing. One of the reasons the Jews got special treatment (pre-Jewish war and exhile) from sacrificing to the Roman Gods was because their at-that-time monotheistic religion was considered ancient and the Romans respected ancient. A huge part of early Christianity involved the Christians trying to convince the Romans that they were the new Israel and therefore deserving of toleration despite refusing to honor the Roman and local Gods (instead of the Jews).
The moment the Christians had real power, they went from begging for tolerance, to crushing paganism and persecuting Jews (who had the gall to challenge the validity of their cooption of Judaism).
I’m convinced humans have some kind of natural inherent fetishization of “old knowledge”.
If it happened outside of living memory they somehow knew more or had special magical knowledge we just don’t understand or can’t interpret from our perspective. The older, the more true people can be convinced that it is.
As if there is some kind of “platonic ideal” of thoughts or ideas from which all others are derived from, where the further back something back it is, it MUST be more true
No doubt, I’m sure if we pulled up some 2k yo racist screed against Picts or whatever, we’d be like ahhh ancient wisdom we must treasure it, whereas now I just block people lol
The Romans did this very thing. One of the reasons the Jews got special treatment (pre-Jewish war and exhile) from sacrificing to the Roman Gods was because their at-that-time monotheistic religion was considered ancient and the Romans respected ancient. A huge part of early Christianity involved the Christians trying to convince the Romans that they were the new Israel and therefore deserving of toleration despite refusing to honor the Roman and local Gods (instead of the Jews).
The moment the Christians had real power, they went from begging for tolerance, to crushing paganism and persecuting Jews (who had the gall to challenge the validity of their cooption of Judaism).