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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   1681 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 2, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I like interesting historical theories. Especially with an element of the fantastical. Ancient apocalypse series is full of them.

Another one I read somewhere was about how "dragons" might have been real. A large winged predator that was hunted to extinction at the end of the last ice age as they clashed with human populations.

Anyone have any fun ones they've read recently?

That myths are oral histories of the Nephilim who ruled various ancient societies/areas.

The wild hare version is they were the original speakers of the Indo-European language.

Islam, in rejecting alcohol, had trouble spreading beyond areas that weren’t already using other mild recreational drugs.

Polytheistic Norse: [eying Christ and Mohammed to see which might be more powerful]

Volga Bulgars and the Khazar Khaganate: …and one last thing, it’s haram to get drunk.

Polythestic Norse: Buddy, if you think I’m wintering in Uppåkra without mead…

What's the drug of choice for its initial areas? Do stimulants like tobacco or qat count?

The remains of any costal civilization 10,000 years ago would have been wiped out by the sea level rise.

For a more specific theory I'm fond of the Azores as Atlantis.

There's a great theory out there about how, three and a half millennia ago, the Mediterranean was dominated by super advanced civilizations. Like, this is way before classical Greece, but supposedly these guys had intercontinental trade routes, giant palace complexes, literacy, booming populations, etc. The kinds of things you would expect from the Roman Empire. Then a series of catastrophes happened, culminating by an invasion of mysterious sea people that came out of literally nowhere; their cities burned, massive fractions of the population died, pottery and art regressed hundreds of years, the written word was lost and had to be reinvented with new alphabets... basically their own version of the dark ages.

It's an excellent theory, with lots of detailed lore and worldbuilding, it almost makes me think it was real... oh, wait.

Pls, for future reference don't ambush us with "Extra Credits"

"Intercontinental" is overselling it a bit when we're talking trade that is mostly Mediterranean+.

Greece is in Europe, Egypt is in Africa, and Hittites and Assyrians were in Asia; good enough for me.

Besides, the point of the meme is to play up Bronze Age civilization as much as possible with technically-true statements, to make it sound like a crazy conspiracy theory on par with ancient aliens and Atlantis.

Ya bronze age was nuts. I think I listened to the hardcore history episode about the sea peoples and bronze age collapse.

The one that I like a lot is Canopy Theory, which suggested that earth was surrounded by a layer of water (vapor) which might have protected against harmful radiation and increased air pressure at the surface, which could have allowed some types of creatures to grow larger than 'normal' and might explain the giant bugs, extra plant life, even dinosaurs.

Then some large interference (a sufficiently large asteroid strike?) broke the equilibrium and the water came crashing down in a short period of time, eventually settling under the surface and in the ocean basins.

Its sometimes proffered as a way to explain how so many cultures in antiquity had flood myths arising around the same time. Which would be wild since that implies it wasn't that long ago on geological timescales.

I like that it was ice and when it crashed, we got the universal flood myths.

I suspect there was something stopping a lot of the radiation until pretty recently, I don’t see how European colonization of Africa and Latin America would have been possible otherwise. Maybe the ozone layer.

What does radiation have to do with colonization?

How’s a guy from England going to conquer Africa if standing in the sun for two hours gives him second degree burns, and doing that for a few years gives him cancer?

By wearing a hat.

I guess he could put a shirt on first.

I think he's imagining white people cooking like prawns south of the tropics. Or simply dying of melanoma of the melanoma.

Needless to say, it's not that bad. Sure, it's remarkably unpleasant, but covering up and staying indoors during the worst of the glare goes a long way. Melanin or modern sunscreen goes even further. It was malaria that was the real bottleneck in a lot of places.

Oh nice, probably claims there are sky whales too yeah?

The various alternative chronologies are good for a laugh, e.g. we wuz Pechenegs n shit.

Ha! Perfect!

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