Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by yawz on Thursday March 23, 2017 @08:50AM (#13939270)

History is written by the... victors. It's not surprising to get a single-sided story when the other side didn't care much about leaving written detailed records.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by tonmoy on Thursday March 23, 2017 @09:03AM (#13939346)

The Huns were victors though, so the age old adage may need some updating

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by wu-ikkyu on Thursday March 23, 2017 @09:36AM (#13939558)

"History is written by the victors, unless the victors can't write."

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by Spooky23 on Thursday March 23, 2017 @10:15AM (#13939901)

Not really. In my mind, they won the battle but lost the war.

It all depends on your point of view. If you look over the last millennia, the Huns didn't leave a lot of legacy beyond finishing off the corpse of Western Roman Empire, which wasn't really an empire then anyway. Their culture was absorbed and we only know of them because of that.

End of the day, they were ultimately just another band of warlords.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by marcosdumay on Thursday March 23, 2017 @09:51AM (#13939686)

Yep. History is written by... the people that cared to write it down. And Romans wrote a lot.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by vetinari on Thursday March 23, 2017 @11:09AM (#13940384)

That and the random chance of having your writings preserved through centuries.

Burning down the libraries in not something unheard of.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by clw8 on Friday March 24, 2017 @12:56AM (#13946704)

Burning wasn't necessary. Most texts that weren't copied continuously were simply lost. Our oldest sources for written Chinese are on dinosaur bones -- but the script already had characters that clearly show they also wrote with pen on bamboo slips, but we don't have any surviving examples of that until the Classical Chinese era.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by mason240 on Thursday March 23, 2017 @11:08AM (#13940366)

They lost at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains and were driven from Roman lands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Catalaunian_Plai...

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by qordoba on Thursday March 23, 2017 @10:14AM (#13939893)

History is written by other side as well. Unfortunately layman does not bother to read/listen alternatives.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by slang800 on Thursday March 23, 2017 @10:48AM (#13940165)

Historians have no problem incorporating reliable documents written by the "other side". You just have to understand the context that it was written in.

However, all the "alternative" history I've looked at has ended up being fan fiction, with no real supporting evidence.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by mason240 on Thursday March 23, 2017 @11:05AM (#13940345)

A common refrain hurled by those completely ignorant of how historiography works.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by dang on Thursday March 23, 2017 @12:14PM (#13941108)

Please don't post snarky dismissals to HN. It sounds like you know a lot about history. If someone is wrong, explain why, so we all learn something. Putting other people down because they don't know as much as you doesn't belong in thoughtful conversation.

This applies to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13940423 too.

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