Pol Pot was a monster. I used to live in Cambodia and the echoes of his brutality are still very clear. My good friend became an orphan due to her father being made to execute his own father. This fucked him up so bad that he became unable to be a father to her. It truly is horrific and the people still suffer today from the events that occurred there.
Generational trauma is a real thing. I grew up near a Cambodian refugee community, and many of them were some of the happiest people I've ever known. Some of them worked as much as they could and lived off cigarettes and pacing just to keep the nightmares away.
My boss was lucky enough to escape Cambodia in the late 1970s. His family lived in the western mountains range. When the communist were driven into the mountains, my boss and his family tried to get out. They hiked through the mountains at night and hid during the day because they were being hunted. They made it into Thailand and got a flight to the US. He was 7 and his mom brought her kids to safety after many of the men in the family were killed.
I remember hearing of a medical mystery discovered in LA county in the 80s. It was recognized that there were an alarming number of blind Cambodian women (~2,000, iirc). It was determined that most of the cases were actually hysterical blindness caused by the horrific things these women witnessed. I apologize if this was actually an anecdote, exaggeration, urban legend, or misremembered on my part. But the fact that it sounds so completely possible to still stand the test of time, says enough.
A coworker of ours was a Cambodian refugee. His father was some sort of government official in Cambodia. They fled through the jungle. My friend was about 2 years old and he vividly remembers his dad holding him over his shoulder, while his two older sibling ran along side. He remembers the bullets whizzing by them.
My first mentor was a Cambodian man who had to flee when he was still a child. After everyone was brought into the village square, and every child over a certain age was shot in the head with no warning. "You can't straighten a bent tree" was their thinking, so anyone old enough to have started puberty but still too young to physically work hard enough was just killed. It was that simple. Anyway, once him and I became close he started telling me all about his time in the jungle, waking towards Thailand. That lasted a couple years, hours of conversations a day. It took him two years to make it into Thailand on foot, passing mountains of rotting corpses left as a warning the entire time. He didn't even know his father was still alive until they met up in the Thai camp. The things he and other survivors told me still occasionally haunt my dreams. But most of them were some of the happiest people I've ever known. Seeing that kind of contrast at such a young age really made me rethink and reframe my own problems. It's real hard to stress over topical issues when you see how happy people who literally suffered the worst things imaginable can still be.
@@OneBentMonkeyI believe it. In psychology it’s a version of conversion disorder, which is where physical ailments (from as severe as paralysis to something like hysterically vomiting) present due to no physical medical reason, but psychological ones such as trauma and severely stressful situations. It would make sense that after witnessing terrible things accompanied by the stress of fearing those things happening to you, that your brain would shut off the parts that cause you to see the things causing the stress, aka temporary blindness.
The reason the sword names sound like they come from Lord of the rings is because Tolkein was a scholar of ancient languages and cultures. He knew all about the sword names and put them in his books.
That and he took a lot of influence from Norse lore in his writing so it's possible that he got influence from sword names from viking weapon names. Not saying he did I don't know that but I'm just saying it's a reasonable theory.
The Khmer Rouge demonstrated that true believers are worse than corrupt regimes. We all know how the Soviet elite didn’t live like communists; they lived the high life. The Khmer Rouge, by contrast, didn’t take the wealth from the central bank, they blew it up. They had the entire city of Phnom Penh to themselves and could have stolen everything in the whole city. But they didn’t. They shot any of their own who stole anything (though that was harder to enforce out in the provinces). They were true believers, and that made their rule more catastrophic than any corrupt regime with a veneer of ideology.
And yet, they didn't lower themselves to go work the fields and starve. Pol Pot never feared being shot for not producing enough rice without enough knowledge of how to farm. In that regard, neither Soviet nor Cambodian communists lived what they preached. Capitalism sucks, but those who profit by it actually profit by being capitalists. Those who profit from communism aren't those truly living in a communist fashion. That hypocrisy adds something special to leaders like Pol Pot and Stalin.
I read somewhere recently that the blood eagle (if it was actually utilized) may have only three examples in the vikings' entire history. Even if it wasn't true, it's a terribly frightening thing to imagine.
three ? only one comes to my mind .......but I know about a whoopin 3 examples of kinda berserker descriptions...... most things we hear about vikings these days are simply exaggerated myths and assumptions (broadly based on myths)
@@TheMILVSCR I'm from North Frisia and the founding legendof my village states that it was founded by "pirates" who came up the river as a relic hunter I can confirm that the earliest post-bronze age signs of settlement here are dating to the time around 900AD and on the fields of the not too far away ancestrial village of my father's family I found plenty of looted looking stuff from across Europe (England included....or Ireland - "insular"art it's called in archaeology and at least I'd say it's church interior from likely England) so, succesfully looting we clearly did but real berserking (on shrooms, lol ) or infanticiding, rather not .....think there is only one account of this child-offing thing and that comes from Adam von Bremen if I'm not mistaken - a person who maybe saw some reason to paint pre-catholic Northerners as a bit more savage than it was actually true ..... from early viking-age on (mid 8th cent) christian symbolism, crosses and trinity symbols, absolutely dominates indigenous norse art btw
Even if it's only a tale imagine the fear knowing the vikings were coming and gearing stories about berserker and the blood eagle. Psychological warfare is powerful.
A lot of that Viking stuff is now understood to be completely untrue and mostly the result of Christian propaganda. 1. Vikings almost never "burned cities to the ground" because then they wouldn't be able to return the next year to raid the place again. That one has been definitively disproven. 2. A lot of the women who ended up in Scandinavia as wives went their voluntarily, largely due to the superior hygiene of the Vikings compared to other cultures at the time. This is highly attested especially in the British isles. 3. The norse afterlife of Valhalla being a place of endless combat is also very likely a result of Christian propaganda designed to make the pagan past look silly and barbaric. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that european paganism broadly was very similar to Hinduism, and that the norse actually believed in a form of partial reincarnation in the afterlife along with a place among one's honored ancestors in places like Valhol and Alfheim, depending on one's lineage and which God they worshipped most closely
Valhalla was one of their places of spirit rebirth. Where their spirits could go in the afterlife to either be with their ancestors for eternity or their spirit could return to earth in another form if they feel they have not gained proper entry for eternity.
Another great advantage the Assyrians had was having a standing army round the clock ready to fight. one can only imagine the shock and dread of their enemies as they were used to besieging armies having to pack up and go home during the harvest season and realising the Assyrian army was staying there for the long haul.
No doubt men of war, must of been shocking to think that they, just as any other force would surely retreat to tend to their crops, only for them to not retreat at all but rather continue their campaign indefinitely. Must of left those formations with such a superior place in the battlefield. No wonder they conquered so many.
Hawkeye: War is war and hell is hell. Of the two, war is a lot worse. Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye? Hawkeye: Easy, father, tell me. Who goes to hell? Mulcahy: Sinners, I suppose. Hawkeye: Right, there are no innocent bystanders in hell. War is chock full of them.
Just like the "blood eagle", there is little evidence for berserkers, and this could be another exaggeration based simply on the skill and ferocity of their warriors. They could also be connected to ulfheðinn (wolf warriors) who may have existed and would wear animal skins to try to embody the spirit of the animal, that they may then have acted like on the battlefield.
I'm sure a nicely preserved body will turn up somewhere in Northern Europe of a half naked warrior wearing wolves skins which they can test the hair on to rule out psilocybin use. Test one of the bog bodies I say albeit ritual sacrifice is a far cry from dying in battle... Unless your a Scandinavian pirate that is xD
@@djstona5284no psilocin in the Fly Agaric. There IS evidence that Berserkers were real. Blood eagle was written about ,but no body with such damage has been found.
Yep. If I remember correctly, blood eagle is mentioned only once or twice in some sagas and seems to be mostly a mistranslation of the original cryptic and symbolic text. The berserker mushroom thing is also a theory of one guy, and not exactly agreed on. Again, in the sagas sometimes berserkers stop in the middle of a fight to have a nice chat - not exactly a mindless behavior. Lindybeige has a good video about it.
Spartans did not practice in fact infanticide. Thats a very popular myth that has unfortunately gained a lot of traction. This is a myth pushed by Plutarch ( Athenian historian) that claims Spartans supposedly threw weak children down to a pit called apothetae in mount taygetos. However the area has been thoroughly excavated and though they found a lot of bodies no skeletons of children were actually found. It's speculated that Spartans threw prisoners or criminals there.
@@GothPaokisomewhere I read that while the Spartans did indeed check the newborn babies. It is less about killing them but to check if they're fit to become future soldiers. The unfit children just became regular civilians, rather than conscripted into the army
The video is titles histories most brutal cultures but the Comanche weren't mentioned that's nuts to me. They were an incredibly brutal raiding culture.
People forget that Humaity climbed its way to the top of the food chain, and even today, even though we claim to be civilized we can still be savages when we are pushed enough. And yes a lot of people have ponted out a lot to me and yes I acknowledge some of the points made below to me, such as: there are poeple that like violence for violence sake but we mucst not forget the fact that it took a great deal of violence for us to get where we are today, that we are should be puched to being civil (wich is a work in progress from what I've seen and expirienced) and that there is a differenfe between hunters and soldiers, and in my opinion hunters and soldiers are different from the mindless violent people.
Those people aren't the problem. If you're pushed into something then there is a reason to fight. It may be a bad reason, but it's a reason. It sounds like these guys don't need a reason to fight, they just fight because they like it. "I love the smell of gasoline in the morning. It smells like victory." But I agree with your point, we're still not as civilized as we like to think we are.
@@vonries I agree with the points you made as well. Becoming as civilized as we are now took a long time, and the reasons some poeple chose to propagate violence or too do violence well some reasons do leave a lot to be desired i agree there as well. And its a shame that history is being "lost" , i.e., not taught well enough in schools now adays. I love history and the grand majority of what I know is self study and i left high schol close to a decade ago so I really dont want to know how little is taught now.
Well, yeah because we had to climb the food chain. We had to rise against lions, tigers, bears and other human species. We had to be savage to reach the top.
@@FindTheTruthBeforeTheEnd I've just looked and dam! I thought running one podcast was stressful enough running so many channels! Well I take my headphones off to you sure, but as im new i think im going to digest this channels content first and then move over to his mega channel 😀
I am ukrainian, and I think that our ancestors - sarmatians, were the most brutal in history. Because without the skulls of enemies killed in battle boys were not allowed to drink alcohol, and girls - were not allowed to marry. although perhaps a representative of each nation wants to see their ancestors as the most brutal in history.
I would push back on that and say that while there must certainly be many people who might look at history in this context this would likely not even occur to many if not most people. It's the first time i've ever considered the prospect myself
I’m Cambodian and my parents had to go through stuff similar to what happened in the film. My dad in particular teared up watching it, and he rarely ever cries… It’s hard for him to watch due to how accurate it is
Advisor: "So what are you thinking about doing for your dissertation?" Student: "Proving the Blood Eagle was possible." Advisor: "Coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool....."
Early iron weapons were generally no better than bronze weapons, but the abundance of iron was certainly a plus, compared to copper and especially tin. They used arsenic in a process for iron that was similar to what was already being done to harden copper and baked the iron in a cast. Given the arsenic poisoning that these smiths would be subjected to, you'd probably be able to tell a smith's bones from an ancient burial by doing a toxicology analysis. Egyptians used iron for jewelry and novelty items, because they lacked the forges or techniques to make tools and weapons from it.
4:00 plot twist....the arrogant, condescending dude is actually wrong. that would ultimately be hilarious, in the end. like he grows old and dies and wakes up in a paralyzed vegetative state where he remains for decades.....because he knows that is for the best!
Learning about the Khmer Rouge in high school was one of the most impactful lessons in history. I was an AP student and had a college level world history class. Half of the year we learned about the most brutal and deadly regimes in modern history and the Khmer Rouge’s brutality and murderous atrocities against their own people stood out as a major cause of human suffering in the last century outside of the holocaust…
Vikings were warriors. But they weren't exactly a standard military. And yet, they wrecked havoc wherever they went, losing very few battles. Just imagine if they were a more well trained army with proper battle formations, tactics and strategy. They could've outperformed the Spartans in the field.
You could make a wholw channel talking about the atrocities different civilizations have caused... Oh wait... That's pretty much half of Into The Shadows 😅
To everyone reading this Keep going. No matter how stuck you feel, no matter how bad things are right now, no matter how hopeless & depressed you feel, no matter how many days you have spent wishing things were different. I promise you won't feel this way forever. Keep going..🙏Bless my day with a follow🤲🏼 it mean a lot
In Chukchi culture, which is a nation in Northeast Siberia, there is a folklore tale about a hero who embarks on a long and adventurous journey to obtain a magical deer. However, upon reaching the settlement, he encounters a formidable bully who unjustly takes the deer from him. Surprisingly, in this particular Chukchi tale, the bully becomes the protagonist, confirming the brutal nature of Chukchi culture.
Fun fact: The Bluetooth symbol is named after Harald Bluetooth and is a combination of two runes. I may have actually learned that from one of Simon’s channels.
I'm not sure why he didn't mention that in this video about brutal cultures. When he was talking about the Assyrians crucifying their enemies and putting their heads on pikes, I couldn't help but wonder where the Bluetooth symbol came from.
@@joebalser9921the word blue referred to dark or black in the Viking age. Africans were referred to as blåmenn i.e. blue men. Naturally, Vikings didn’t refer to them as blue, but merely dark.
You can kinda understand the infanticide. Life is already brutal and harder than anything any of us can imagine. Caring for a sick, weak baby that’s only gonna remain sick and weak it’s whole entire life. Is just going to make it that much harder.
The blood eagle is only mentioned in the sagas. There are no contemporary accounts or other evidence of it being performed. RU-vid “history” videos like this aren’t concerned with history, only views and subs. People lap it up though, because it’s easily digestible and they can’t be bothered to read a book.
It’s less obnoxious than the blood eagle thing, but they also get the “babies left to die” thing wrong. It wasn’t unheard of, but it also wasn’t a regular occurrence. The “history” channel’s idiot show has thrown a lot of nonsense at people and they lap it up.
Funnily enough, vikings were extremely feminist when compared to other cultures in the same period. Viking women were still housewives, but they weren't considered the property of men like women elsewhere. They were free to choose whatever husband they wished, and they even had the right to divorce for various reasons. For instance, if a man struck his wife three times she could demand a divorce. Pretty crazy how a culture that's considered to have been so savage had better rights for women than some cultures still existing today
Both things can be true. They were brutal to their enemies but "civilized" towards their own. Genghis Khan was the same way, but it doesn't make him any less of a brutal, savage conqueror.
With as much as RU-vidrs tend to change their titles and thumbnails for videos, I'm surprised you guys left such a large, glaring typo in the eye catching word at the top of the thumbnail. "Muredered" isn't a word.
It gets engagement People comment to point it out thus boosting the video in the algorithm because "people must like this look at how many comments it's getting"
I'm probably wrong, but my understanding is that the blood eagle wasn't common, used only in extreme circumstances. And it was the lungs pulled out and stretched over the bones not the skin.
From what I understood, it's more they started as pirates but became traders over time. So later in history they were foremost traders and settlers, but early on they were were primarily pirates.
Yup. But Vikings (especially the Danes) weren't as hostile as Anglo-Saxons. No, not trying to offend the English, but damn did they did the poor Celts, only "sparing" the Scots, Irish and the Welsh.
I guess there’s a few varying descriptions of The Blood Eagle, if it was indeed used… The most common description though, was where the victim was alive while they had their rib cage separated from their spine, the rib cage pulled away far enough to get to the lungs, and then the lungs pulled out and left connected to the victim while they hung outside the ribcage
@@jbear3478 The English had a horrific punishment for people that were guilty of treason, and they were usually still alive right to the end (ie what happened to William Wallace).
2:50 ABSOLUTELY false! the norse successfully fought major battles against all sorts of kingdoms. they weren't pirates, they were armies travelling by ship, with the ships as well as the weapons and tactics being top notch by the standards of their times, due to their very far travels and great riches that enabled them to collect goods and knowledge relevant to warfare from a larger expanse of europe than most other european powers (probably all but the byzantine empire). they conquered and settled major territories in france (normandy, called such because of it) and britain, founded the kievan rus empire in ukraine that held more territory than ukraine from the baltic to the black sea, and they formed the royal guard of the byzantine emperor for 400 years. there also is no basis for translating "viking" as "pirate", since nobody used those words interchangeably, and what the norse meant by it wasn't at all the attacking of ships, which is piracy - it was coastal raiding. this is another one of those trashy scripts where I know it wasn't written by daven, because daven knows things and doesn't make total BS claims by just winging it.
The Old Norse peoples wrote many many sagas and stories. To say the runic inscriptions were the only things they wrote is factually incorrect. While many of the stories and sagas were written down after the Viking age they were composed much earlier.
You know that the infamous blood eagle, while attested from texts, is not known with certainty to have ever been actually inflicted on anybody, right? Siilarly, while the existence of berserkers is generally acknowledged, their actual practices are still a major source of debates between historians interested in the matter. Not to mention that, given who described them, the general depredations of the vikings are likely inflated far beyond their reality.
