in a typical obscurantist move, we're told the "Great Northern War" was another 20-year long war which happened a century earlier and it had Russia against an International Coalition (as usual, the Brits were involved)
We have this curious monument - supposedly erected in 1816, so right after the end of The Great Northern War - in celebration of an event 200 years earlier
And then there's the fact that the fellow with an outstretched hand has weird hair
this is amazing - two fellows both with Roman-style tunics - one of them with a Stahlhelm (later remade into a bad hairdo), the other with a strange shield
And then there's the fact that the conquerors renamed everything
Once again we have a Roman-looking Suvorov - who bears the curious title of Rymniki
We're told that it stand for a town in nowadays Romania where he defeated the Ottomans
Except ... he was actually busy in the Eastern frontier of Russia defeating the Tatars
So here's my interpretation of what it all means
Westerners are a very recent arrival on the scene - whitey literally came from nowhere (beyond the ice ring maybe ?) and promptly proceeded genociding the natives, destroying their cities and enslaving the survivors
They arrived on the Atlantic coast of Europe very recently - maybe that's what the French Revolution is all about - and promptly proceeded to advance eastwards
As usual, the natives were either killed or expelled, their cities would be razed and rebuilt
In Eastern Europe they set up this thing called "Russia" - which was a German-led entity over natives of a different language and culture
A certain moustachioed Austrian painter would later attempt to recreate this exact entity
It seems that by 1812 there was internal friction among the International Coalition - and someone (I suspect the Brits) lost and got expelled from the continent
They would be back some 50 years later to genocide everything east of the Pulkovo meridian
Either the fallout from the indiscriminate use of plasma weapons clogged up the waterway network
Or it was simply decided this yet another goodie the slaves were no longer allowed to have
But it came to be that rail replaced water
And when did this happen ?
"On 1 September 1865, the English company John Trevor-Barkley began construction on the Bucharest–Giurgiu line. Commissioned by the King of Romania, the line was opened to traffic on 26 August 1869."
For those who don't know, here's a quick explanation - men have XY chromosomes, women have XX
That means the Y chromosome is passed unaltered from father to son
This makes it possible to trace paternal lineages
Of particular interest is the European distribution of the R1b male lineage
It overwhelmingly dominates the Atlantic coast, then is on a steady decrease the further one goes to the East, until reaching non-existence in Eastern Europe
I believe this makes it pretty clear what happened
These are the descendants of the army that destroyed the Old World
They came by sea, made landfall upon the Atlantic coast - and steadily advanced eastwards