Drought encouraged Attila's Huns to attack the Roman Empire, tree rings suggest | Hacker News Reader

Drought encouraged Attila's Huns to attack the Roman Empire, tree rings suggest

cam.ac.uk

20 pointsEumenes9 comments

This is getting tiresome and predictable.

There seems to be a concerted effort across academia to:

1. Depict invasions as migrations and downplay any effects on the population being invaded.

2. Ascribe the primary cause of all events to climate change.

That the Age of Migrations was driven by cycles of good climate and bad, is an idea that goes back decades, well before our current anxiety about the anthropogenic effects on climate. Even that name, Age of Migrations, goes back decades in several languages.

The nomadic populations of the steppe did cover a large area each year, but their needs were met within that limited area. Such populations did not make the vast trek across Eurasia unless they were somehow compelled to.

Steppe history is a field where so many scholars are elderly (sometimes near-centenarian) white men who are aloof from any wokeness trends in academia. They would be baffled by your insinuation that the standard views they have held for long careers already, are part of some PC conspiracy.

Do tell, which invasion are you dog whistling about these days?

Many academics are proposing similar hypotheses. Do you

a) consider and evaluate the supporting evidence

b) blame the woke

A tough choice, to be sure.

When people invade with their wife and kids it is a migration. Why would we not call it that?

Perhaps there was a previous effort to cast anyone invading Rome as a barbarian and it's worth reconsidering that bias. Hence the English word for Vandal.

True, looks like 'reimagining history'.

In my opinion, a lot of these 'migration' were done primarily to expand own territory even if current territory was sufficient to fulfil needs of the population. It is human extinct to go to war with neighbours for petty reasons.

Recent Eg., Spanish invasion of america, british/dutch colonies. Also future expansion to Moon, Mars.

A lot of these migrations were done primarily because populations were being squeezed by neighbors. For so many of the migrations we have historical records documenting that group X had to move westward because group Y was encroaching on them from the east, and group Y was in turn facing pressure from group Z to their east. But because these chains often correlated with periods of poor climate that reduced the grassland that these pastoral peoples depended on, and there was less such instability during other periods, climate is viewed as a more prominent factor than mere greed for territory.

European colonization is not a good comparison, inasmuch as that was carried out by sedentary populations that had completely different economies, religions, and political structures than the nomadic populations of the Eurasian steppe.

> 2. Ascribe the primary cause of all events to climate change.

in history and adjacent fields, this is the current angle you must incorporate to get any significant funding. its that simple.

edit: 3 members of my family are working archaeologists, one of whom is PI on a major UNESCO world heritage site. I am not an expert in the field myself, but I am asked to read and offer minor editing assistance on several grant propodals a year.

This trend has nothing to do with PC agenda or wokeness. consider that other so called 'woke' priorities are not similarly promoted, the reason is there is no substantial grant money coming from those directions. As other commenters have pointed out, environmental factors have been a staple category of theory for as long as human settlement patterns have been studied. the reason this niche is happening 'all across academia' right _now_ is that lately, that's where the money is.

There is no more to this trend than

1. losing a grant to another proposal

2. reading said proposal and noticing the (sometimes clearly procrustean) climate change angle.

3. reworking your own proposal along similar limes

4. getting in the next round.

word travels fast.

I dont understand how you are sayong this has nothing to do with wokeness- Everything about the 'woke' movements consist of exerting financial pressure in the direction of a handful of hot topic political issues.

This is not unique to archealogy - sociology papers dont get funded or published unless theyre making a 'woke' argument.

Really when we say 'woke' what we mean is the current ideological zeitgeist, which is in the far liberal direction at the moment. And yes, everything about that movement is top down and facilitated by exerting financial pressure.

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