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Comment by karlp | Hacker News Reader

It sounds really deep, but there doesn't seem to be any truth to it? Wikipedia mentions internal problems and conquest by a neighboring kingdom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush

I don't understand why make up stories when there are more than enough material with the colonial history.

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One of the most frustrating aspects of these liberationist counter-narratives is the pretense that whoever conquered or succeeded certain civilizations/cultures, did so by a unique application of force.

Roughly: 'our people were good and peaceful until evil warlike invaders with wholly-different human motivations wiped us out.'

We should aim to fix injustices in the world. But building false narratives of differential demonization will only recreate problems in the long run.

How does an invasionary force conquer a foreign land where they are outnumbered other than by being warlike?

Lets define warlike as those who have achieved a high degree of skill at warfare.

The Mongols who conquered cities and states were famously warlike. So were the Macedonians/Greeks under Alexander.

People spin history to try and enhance the prestige of groups they identify with. Even when their group identities don’t really make sense in contexts that existed thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away. For instance, “were the ancient Egyptians black?” is a deep rabbit hole.

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