A few things that this theory falls utterly short on:
- Reliefs that were never exported or even found by colonists are often defaced.
- Pharaonic texts specifically reference the practice of defacement and treat it as an act distinct from general vandalism or theft.
- Works show other systematic damage unrelated to racial issues (from the article, statues receiving offerings had their right hands removed, and those providing them had their left hands removed).
- Single reliefs show noses removed on some figures but not others, even when the preserved noses look substantially non-European (e.g. the article's last photo).
- Defacements aren't random, or tied to ethnicity; instead, politically inconvenient rulers like Hatshepsut are overwhelmingly erased while others (even close family members) are not.
- Where text accompanies figures, the names of the defaced figures are also defaced. Which requires knowledge of Ancient Egyptian, a motive to target specific historical figures, and a concern with matters unrelated to appearance.
- Weathering on in situ works commonly suggests noses were removed much closer to their creation than to the 1800s. (This is less clear for works brought to Europe, but that opens the question of simple fragility.)
All of that is above and beyond questions of evidence for the practice, or historical context that Egyptian statues with black features were actually convenient for some racist theories like Samuel Weston's. There's basically no racist practice colonists wouldn't have been willing to engage in, certainly. But advancing specific claims that are inconsistent with huge amounts of evidence is rightly considered a fringe belief.
If you can do that, you can’t put anything past that person/culture.
That said, I don't really buy into the theory being presented here. I would need to see some documentary evidence supporting it first, such as a common cultural association at the time of "broad noses" with "Africans" or an attempt to portray ancient Egypt as a Caucasian society. People knew where Egypt was. The pyramids, temples and other signs of civilization were still there. Knocking the noses off of the statues wouldn't hide anything.
Also, I never said anything about white people. I was talking specifically about the Western Europeans who put people in Zoos.
I think your comment perfectly illustrates the lengths people will go to and the ways in which they will contort their minds in order to uphold an strange idea that is dear to their hearts, however...
Ironic that I was pointing out that you're doing exactly this.
>Putting people in Zoos is a good thing? It dehumanizes Europeans to say that it is sick to put people in Zoos?
Are you even going to attempt to argue in good faith?
>Also, I never said anything about white people.
Of course you didn't! Then your racism would be overt. But your anti European narrative is an increasingly common one that has infested academia and is creeping into industry.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological and political battle. We ban accounts that do that, so please stop doing that too.
The Africans they encountered had virtually no technology and no government, and looked like different creatures. It wasn't something that required rationalization. There's far less malice in this than you'd like to see.
As far as I am aware, there is no credible evidence that Egyptians strongly represented south African phenotypes or had the same shade of skin. It is a modern internet meme. Lay off the propaganda.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
These are your words. These are your thoughts.
He said those words. Word by word. Word. By Word.
The known world to you consists of various tribes of humans who all share rather similar physical phenotypes (white skin, soft, slightly curly to straight hair, similar facial features), with reasonably similar technology (metalworking, beasts of burden, farming, government of some sort, written language, the wheel) and suddenly you discover a group of beings with none of these things - no written language, no cultivated land, no domesticated animals, no wheel, no metalworking, and on top of all this, they look totally different from anyone you've ever seen.
It did not take evilness or malice of any kind on the part of medieval Europeans to reason that these beings, if they were human, were less human than they were. Morality is cultural and relative, you cannot demonize historic cultures through your enlightened lense.
So no, these are more than just "my words," this is a rational sentiment for a medieval European in the historic context. Globalization is a modern phenomenon. Why do you think there was incentive to put these people in zoos?
The problem with this is that it is 100% incorrect. After 1492 (and to a lesser extent before then), Western Europeans were fully aware of African Civilization, particularly those in West Africa.. They traded with them. They wrote correspondences to them, see: "Letters to the King of Portugal" [0]. Africans obviously farmed, starting between the years 8000 and 6000 BCE [1], the metalworking of West Africans is and was well known [1]. During the Iron Age "A profitable trade had developed by which West Africans exported gold, cotton cloth, metal ornaments, and leather goods north across the trans-Saharan trade routes, in exchange for copper, horses, salt, textiles, and beads. Later, ivory, slaves, and kola nuts were also traded" [2]. They had governments obviously (see reference [0]). They had the wheel "Nubians from after about 400 BCE used wheels for spinning pottery and as water wheels. It is thought that Nubian waterwheels may have been ox-driven" [3]. Heck, even the largest university of the middle ages (12th century) was located in Mali, in West Africa, and it wasn't even something that was unknown to Europeans [4] & [5]. I could go on and on.
So all of what you are saying is based totally off of what _you_ think and not any facts, or even what Europeans that encountered Africans thought. What you are saying is entirely based off of your lack of knowledge of African and apparently even European history.
The inferiority idea developed later, specifically in America as a rationalization of the slave trade. It was literally something that was made up to justify what they were doing.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afonso_I_of_Kongo [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_West_Africa#Prehist... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_West_Africa#Iron_Ag... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel#History [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu#Education [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Timbuktu
--edited for clarity