itt favorite unsolved mysteries of history. I'll go first. My pick is the Cagots:
>The Cagots (pronounced: [ka.ɡo]) were a persecuted and despised minority found in the west of France and northern Spain: the Navarrese Pyrenees, Basque provinces, Béarn, Aragón, Gascony and Brittany. Evidence of the group exists back as far as AD 1000.[1]
Cagots were shunned and hated. While restrictions varied by time and place, they were typically required to live in separate quarters in towns, called cagoteries, which were often on the far outskirts of the villages. Cagots were excluded from all political and social rights. They were not allowed to marry non-Cagots, enter taverns, hold cabarets, use public fountains, sell food or wine, touch food in the market, work with livestock, or enter the mill. They were allowed to enter a church only by a special door, and during the service, a rail separated them from the other worshippers. Either they were altogether forbidden to partake of the sacrament, or the Eucharist was given to them on the end of a wooden spoon, while a holy water stoup was reserved for their exclusive use. They were compelled to wear a distinctive dress, to which, in some places, was attached the foot of a goose or duck (whence they were sometimes called "Canards"). So pestilential was their touch considered that it was a crime for them to walk the common road barefooted or to drink from the same cup as non-Cagots.[2]
>The Cagots were not an ethnic group, nor a religious group. They spoke the same language as the people in an area and generally kept the same religion as well. Their only distinguishing feature was their descent from families identified as Cagots. Few consistent reasons were given as to why they should be hated. The Cagots did have a culture of their own, but very little of it was written down or preserved; as a result, almost everything that is known about them relates to their persecution.[3][4]
They were cannibals, lad. We know that pre-Christian societies sometimes ate other humans, the overwhelming majority of this practice would have been wiped out by 1000AD in Western Europe. These people were the 0.1% of the population who considered it acceptable.
Think about it, would you want cannibals using a public fountain you use? Or drinking from the same cup as you?
Nathaniel Bell
yeah ive heard about these people
anyone from france have any input here?
Jordan Gray
that is fucking crazy if true.
Ryder Martin
Except they were never considered or likened to Jews, they were likened to lepers and had the same laws applied to them. It's hard to tell if they were treated like lepers because they were related to lepers or if they were considered unclean for other reasons and leper laws were applied to them for lack of creativity (note also that "leprosy" covered a broad range of physical afflictions back then)
I'm a proponent of the "attempt at quarantine that went way too far" theory. It makes some sense to isolate members from an "infected" household for a long time, especially for something that is more endemic and chronic than epidemic and virulent (think HIV vs the Plague), and a few cases where they let the quarantined back into society only to have them develop the disease years later might have led to hysteria and their families being quarantined forever. It's possible that the disease was either something carried by animals (which would explain the need to isolate everyone who had lived in the household and avoid close contact with them) or it might be genetic and thus only showed up occasionally and incomprehensibly in their descendants, and leper laws were applied. Of course parallels could be drawn with other pariah populations, like the Burakumin.
Interestingly, Cagots/Caqueux/Caquins/Cacous are present in both the Basque country and Bretagne but not really in other regions, which might suggest an Atlantic origin of either the disease or the concept (maybe Ireland?)
Blake Torres
talman shud desu
Connor Torres
Sounds like the dude pissed off the Persian mob
Leo King
>persian mob >rural Australia 1948
The counterfeit rug cartel has its tentacles in everything
Adrian Lopez
>favorite unsolved mysteries of history
the secret offense that augustus to exile ovid to tomis (modern-day romania) for life. ovid hints at it in his poems of exile and the letters he writes back to rome begging for friends to intercede on his behalf (he complained that every time the danube would freeze, barbarians would ride across the ice and fire so many poisoned arrows into tomis that every roof looked like a hedgehog)
Jose Lee
>rug cartel
Dylan Wood
The true name of tutelar deity of Rome that was handed down by generations of high priests.
Some people claim the deity was Pallas Athena because of the Palladium, some claim it was the Magna Mater (Cybele) or again Vesta because of their extreme importance, see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pignora_imperii
Others claim it was an androgynous Capitoline Jupiter because this guy was executed for speaking the name, although the reasoning seems tenuous: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Valerius_Soranus
Tutelary deities wore a mural crown and were associated with Tyche/Fortuna, there are also candidates in obscure indigenous goddesses like Mater Matuta etc, basically no one has any clue.
What's clear is that most places in the Mediterranean had tutelary deities, which were syncretized with commonplace deities but often had the same name as the city, that Rome kept the name of its deity secret because of some voodoo logic, and that the name of this deity was likely the "true name" of Rome and died with the last pagan priests.
Elijah Watson
When a fucking crater to hell opened in the outskirts of Rome, closing up only after some young lad hopped in with a sword.
>The woman is Oikoumene - the personification of the inhabited world. This inhabited or civilized world is either that of the early Roman Empire, or more likely the Mediterranean world conquered by Alexander the Great.[3] She wears upon her head a mural crown [!!!] and veil.
Maybe this interpretation was hasty and it's not Oikoumene but the Tyche of Rome? The mural crown is certainly hard to argue against.
Bentley Cox
The Lacus Curtius, as told by Livy. I made a mistake. Instead of the outskirts of Rome, it was located well within Rome proper.
And more on the concept itself and speculation about the secret name, including a note that she was apparently publicly venerated as Angerona (but Angerona herself was the deity of Silence and secrecy among other things, so it was probably an in-joke) hwlabadiejr.tripod.com/roma.htm
Noah Sanchez
Cagots where decendants of the Cathars who had converted back to regular christianity but shun and stain of their Cathar roots stuck to them.
Kevin Jones
We don't know if Charlemagne actually existed. It's actually very likely he was made up by French nationalists to justify Alsace Lorraine and Cologne being French.
Benjamin White
I don't find it implausible that there would be some Iranian population in Australia post ww2
Jason Rogers
The Cagots pre-date the Cathars.
Adrian Bailey
And it would make little sense for these pariahs to exist in the Basque country and Brittany, when unrepentant gnostic heretics were living relatively free from stigma in Occitan lands (until the Inquisition rooted them out.)
