Nemets Profile picture
Interested in wild adventures, obscure tribes, & historical processes.
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Jan 29 6 tweets 4 min read
Thread with excerpts from "Lies of the Tutsi in Eastern Congo/Zaire. A Case Study: South Kivu (Pre-Colonial to 2018)" by John Kapapi Image At the time of the 1884 Berlin Conference, what is now the eastern Congo was ruled by eight kingdoms. Rwanda had yet to be united. Per the author, Rwandan (Tutsi & Hutu) migration west of Lake Kivu was minimal at the time. Image
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Dec 21, 2024 10 tweets 4 min read
At AmFest - funny to realize that the pro-smoking stuff on rw twitter was an advertising agency op Image Glenn Beck is apparently still alive - he and Levin are the only two people on this I've heard of Image
Sep 18, 2024 6 tweets 5 min read
In line with archaeology, western & central Iberia were populated by hunter-gatherers distinctive from those on Mediterranean coast by their higher Magdalenian ancestry. Those hunter-gatherers had a resurgence over the EEFs as elsewhere during neolithic.



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Steppe ancestry in IEs was diluted by the time that they reached SW Iberia at end of third millennium, in line with other studies. However, there are signs of an Eastern Mediterranean migration to Iberia in Bronze Age or earlier:


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Sep 17, 2024 9 tweets 6 min read
Caesar's destructiveness around the Rhine can be seen in the palynological record around Cologne. The area was densely cultivated starting about 250 BC and reforested after 50 BC, implying depopulation for a century. Image
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pre-modern mass migrations often had appalling death tolls. Pressure of the German Suebi on the Celt Helvetii must have been tremendous: Image
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Sep 3, 2024 10 tweets 8 min read
Safavids were, like Ottomans, born in obscurity in chaos of mid-13th century Mongol invasions - although as Sufi order rather than as tribal migration. Contrary to later propaganda, Sheikh Safi was not a sayyid or from a Shia background, but he became prominent in a Shia milieu.



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Safavid Order had a waqf (charitable endowment) for its benefit by 1305 in Ardabil. Its network of followers expanded in Anatolia, Khorasan, & Mazandaran under aegis of Ilkhanate & some of its successors, but was forced to arm some of its supporters in at least Ardabil.

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Aug 6, 2024 31 tweets 20 min read
Thread with excerpts from "1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh" by Srinath Raghavan Image Eisenhower backed Pakistan, but Kennedy backed India, so by 1965 the USA gave up hope on mediating between the two. That allowed for the Soviets to emerge as the natural mediator in 1965, despite their partiality to India as a result of Pakistan's previous alignment with USA. Image
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Jun 19, 2024 73 tweets 49 min read
Thread with excerpts from "Tribes and Politics in Yemen: A History of the Houthi Conflict" by @BrandtMarieke Image The concept of "dual use" knowledge Image
Jun 7, 2024 36 tweets 20 min read
Thread with excerpts from "Hezbollah: A Short History" by Augustus Richard Norton Image Shia birthrates in mid-20th century Lebanon were higher than those of Sunnis & Christians. Image
Apr 29, 2024 41 tweets 27 min read
Thread with excerpts from "Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic" by Michael Axworthy Image one reason to find the Iranian Revolution interesting is that it proceeded to follow a non-Western path of development, much like India & China, rather than following the Western path.

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Apr 15, 2024 14 tweets 8 min read
one Chicago entomologist used a beetle species as a proxy for water quality (Chicago Water Management is perhaps not trustworthy?) Image alcohol consumption in at least New Kingdom/Roman Egypt as a means to avoid Schistosomiasis: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

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Feb 11, 2024 11 tweets 6 min read
Thread with excerpts from "A History of Myanmar Since Ancient Times: Traditions and Transformations" by Michael Aung-Thwin and Maitrii Aung-Thwin Image Burma is a colonial era English name for Myanmar. In the Burmese language (Myanma Saga), the ethnicity & nationality of locals are not distinguished - such distinctions are made only in Western academia.
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Jan 29, 2024 12 tweets 8 min read
Thread with excerpts from "The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of Africa's Middle Ages" by Francois-Xavier Fauvelle Image Mansa Musa's rise to power is known only through a dictation written down by a secretary in Cairo. Image
Dec 29, 2023 16 tweets 9 min read
Thread with excerpts from "The Algerian War, The Algerian Revolution" by Natalya Vince Image death toll in Algerian War is disputed, but census comparisons suggest it was about 350k-400k - about 3% of the population.
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Dec 25, 2023 19 tweets 12 min read
Thread with excerpts from "The Balkan Reconquista & Turkey's Forgotten Refugee Crisis" by William H. Holt Image Islamic impulse towards iconoclasm ensured that physical Ottoman commemorations of triumphs & catastrophes were usually limited to inscriptions on fountains, clocks towers, & mosques. Statues of men in Turkey are usually from the republican era.


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Dec 17, 2023 16 tweets 10 min read
Thread with excerpts from "The Beginnings of the Ottoman Empire" by Clive Foss Image Contemporary Arabic and Greek sources for the first Ottoman rulers have a dearth of information. However, three late 15th century Turkish offer enough information to understand the early Ottoman realm when combined with archaeological, epigraphic, & cartographic work.

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Dec 2, 2023 39 tweets 28 min read
Thread with excerpts from "The Abbasid Caliphate: A History" by Tayeb El-Hibri Image Latin world's understanding of Abbasid Caliphate was almost mythological due to distance. Byzantines by contrast saw Abbasids as the only empire equivalent to theirs (Holy Roman Empire's imperial pretensions were rejected by Byzantines).
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Sep 6, 2023 45 tweets 30 min read
Thread with excerpts from "Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang" by James A. Millward Image Japanese Xinjiang scholarship is apparently the best developed. One wonders how many parts of the world can be best understood in a third (non-English, non-local) language. Image
Jul 30, 2023 21 tweets 12 min read
Thread with excerpts from "The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 4: From the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs" Image Ctesiphon & Seleucia were part of an agglomeration of seven cities by 636 AD. Unstated if they were partly depopulated by the misery of the previous 34 years (I’d guess they were).
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Jul 23, 2023 7 tweets 4 min read
Seljuk Turks liked animal and human images even after their adoption of Islam - unlike their predecessors.

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Central Asian portrayals of Alexander in Middle Ages
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Jun 13, 2023 8 tweets 5 min read
Thread with excerpts from "The History of the Civil War in Tajikistan" by Iraj Bashiri Image The author arrived in Tajikistan in the middle of the civil war. The local security forces were initially suspicious of him, but eventually decided to let him into their country so that he could popularize their favorite (or second favorite) writer - Sadriddin Ayni.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… ImageImage
Jun 12, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
demographics of 22nd century are interesting to think about. Fully internationalized upper class largely of Indian origin with significant European & East Asian substrate that extensively used genetic engineering, majority of world's population is black, fragments of… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… the mid-21st bioerror plague is one of the big wild cards - no way that genetic engineering tech keeps diffusing without something going really badly. How badly though...