Post how Westerners were depicted in different parts of the world
Ancient Depictions of White People
Also not ancient, but they did a good job of capturing Matthew Perry's likeness imo
7 months ago
A Song period illustration of a Tang Period Enyclopedia of a Roman person.
They apparently liked Bonsai (or Penzai, as it is called in Chinkdom).
Looks far off to be a classical Period Roman, but if you take into account Byzantines, its pretty spot on with their goofy hats and robes n shit.
7 months ago
18th-century Chinese drawing of a Swiss mercenary and his wife. The accompanying description goes:
Barbarian man of the province of Helvetia [Heleiweijiya sheng], of the Great Western Ocean [Europe], and his barbarian wife
This country is a vassal of the Kingdom of Germany [Reermaniya guo]. The people are loyal and righteous; they always pay their debts. Their schools are built by their government, or by their public institutions. Their land, which is frigid due to the mountainous climate, produces gold and jewels. Their people are said to be masters of constructing buildings. Their women are chaste, simple, and honest; being very dexterous, they weave with their bare hands, scorning to use a loom. They make very fine cloths. The earth there produces gold, if you dig a well, you’ll find small pieces of gold. There are gold pieces the size of beans under the river. The mountains produce musk deer, deer and mountain lions. People raise cows for food.
7 months ago
Welll, cheers anyways. Gonna look it up. If I find something I'll post it here.
7 months ago
Sogdians aren't really "white people" by conventional modern standards. Tocharians might have been closer with their light hair and eyes though.
7 months ago
Ahmad ibn Fadlan was an Arab dispatched by the Abbasid caliphate in 921 to the people of Rus on the Volga river. You can find a lot more of his writing online, but Wikipedia quotes this passage:
I have seen the Rus as they came on their merchant journeys and encamped by the Itil. I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blond and ruddy; they wear neither tunics nor kaftans, but the men wear a garment which covers one side of the body and leaves a hand free. Each man has an axe, a sword, and a knife, and keeps each by him at all times. Each woman wears on either breast a box of iron, silver, copper, or gold; the value of the box indicates the wealth of the husband. Each box has a ring from which depends a knife. The women wear neck-rings of gold and silver. Their most prized ornaments are green glass beads. They string them as necklaces for their women.
7 months ago
some of the images that get reposted as Tocharians on these kinds of shitholes are argued to in fact be Sogdians. ancient DNA reveals that the Tarim basin “Europoids” already had substantial East Eurasian mixture in the bronze age, whereas some east Iranian people in the Pamirs even today have very little. the Chinese described red-haired people eveywhere, even on the Yenisei, and there is no textual accompaniment of those murals to prove tocharian identity
7 months ago
Of course, there's no way to cleanly separate language and genetics. Many Sogdians were fair-featured. But the Sogdian language originates with the Indo-Iranians, who were generally not. They had migrated through BMAC and mixed with neolithic Iranians, before coming back into the steppe as Scythians, etc. Just like later Scytho-Sarmatian tribes had tons of blonde and red hair, languages spread faster than genetics or lifestyles.
Also the Chinese really didn't distinguish between any of these groups particularly well.
7 months ago
An account by the 12th century chronicler Usama ibn Munqidh;
"I heard a similar case from a bath attendant called Salim from Ma'arra, who worked in one of my fathers bathhouses. This is his tale:
I earned my living in Ma'arra by opening a bathhouse. One day a Frankish knight came in. They do not follow our custom of wearing a cloth around their waist while they are at the baths, and this fellow put his hand, snatched off my loin-cloth and threw it away. He saw at once that I had just recently shaved my pubic hair.
'Salim!' he exclaimed! I came toward him and he pointed to that part of me.
'Salim! You shall certainly do the same for me!' and he lay down flat on his back. His "hair" was as long as his beard. I shaved him, and when he had felt the place with his hand and found it agreeably smooth, he said: 'Salim, you must certainly do the same for my Dama'. In their language Dama means lady, or wife. He sent his valet to fetch his wife, and when they arrived and the valet brought her in, she lay down on her back and he said to me:
'Do to her what you did to me.' So I shaved her pubic hair, while her husband stood. Then he thanked me and paid me for my services.
7 months ago
China had da massive thing for coral and jade even though they're not even that shiny. Giant slabs of bronze as well.
7 months ago
japanese art at the time was full of nature imagery and geometric repeating patterns
7 months ago
I notice they tend to give Europeans massive pointy noses and drooping eyelids.
7 months ago
It's from the Huang Qing Gongtu (Qing Imperial Tributary Atlas).
It's an 18th Century atlas with maps and descriptions of "Tributary Peoples" (just foreigners really) commissioned by the Qing government.
Pic related, Ongeria People (Hungarians.
7 months ago
Master Huang, how do we depict Russians?
Put a bear in it and make everyone wear fur.
7 months ago
I have a massive pointy nose and droopy eyelids. They aren't wrong.
Just the nose. Beside, Jews are usually stereotyped to have bulbous noses, while other whites just have long, sharp noses.
7 months ago
It's literally nip cuck porn. Monkeys were associated with nips (and chinks) a lot in the past, just think of Son Goku or what have you.
The small, inferior nip is fucking while the chad dutch fucks his qt waifu
7 months ago
Master Huang, how do we depict English people?
Ever visited Canton? They're always fucking drunk. Draw a European man and put a bottle in his hand. Done.
7 months ago
Like, the actual adoption of the deity Heracles? Or a local equivalent of Heracles?
7 months ago
Both. Macedonians brought Heracles all the way to India. There, Buddhism absorbed his legend into something called "Vajrapani". From there, it spread through Buddhism into East Asia. A martial society like Japan ate that shit up like hotcakes.
7 months ago
Imagine being an Asian and seeing these images of far off exotic and strange peoples of Europe.
7 months ago
I find this of enormous interest!
I've looked and only see a wiki
is there anywhere I could read this book?
7 months ago
Vajrapāni
Nah this existed before. Rather it is the iconography and image of Heracles which came to represent it. Same with the Greek depiction of the Buddha.
Dragons might have come from China, but not via the Greeks. They were adopted by steppe nomads like the Sarmatians and ended up in Europe through these (at the time of the Avars, we first see the real idea of the European Dragon emerge). Now there's dragon-like things otherwise, the whole IE serpent-slaying myth is an example of this. But the dragon-banners of the Parthians and the European Dragon of the Middle Ages probably comes from China in this way.
In regards to your other question, yes other myths and ideas came from the East to Greece. Philosophy is a big one, at least from India, as is Chess and the Panchatantra, though these came later. Indian and Chinese influence in Persian art and literature is definitely there as well but I don't know of any clear contributions to Greece off the top of my head.
7 months ago
Sweden is also a vassal of Holland [???]. They show respect by doffing their hats. They carry around a whip to protect themselves. Their women do not respect chastity; they reveal their breasts and lewdly tie their skirts over their clothing.
Classic Sweden
7 months ago
Not him, but basically when Buddhism fir originated they did not depict Buddha, and usually just used a symbol of a lotus.
When Buddhism entered the Greco-Bactrian kingdom the people there depicted Buddha in a pretty Greek fashion. The robes Buddha is usually seen wearing in India and Asia is not Indian dress but actually Greek. And the tight curls on Buddha's head originally were typical Greek curly locks. Shame some of the earliest Buddhist art was destroyed by the Taliban.
Another Greek influence on Buddhism is Fujin, the Wind God in Mahayana Buddhism. He is of Greek origin.
7 months ago
Now
They are also blessed with a large Male member, which they esteem highly, considering it a great privilege to be allowed to work with a great tool. Generally they are well endowed below the belt, surpassing our Dutch Nation in this respect; and being fully conscious of this, they do not spare it, but make it work, as we shall later describe at length. (1602)
Pieter de Marees
7 months ago
The name Vajrapani in Sanskrit means "thunderbolt in hand" which I suppose could be a reference to Zeus, father of Herakles
2nd century AD depiction of Vajrapani "
(right) guarding the buddha
Looks pretty greek if you ask me
7 months ago
The Dutch got their last laugh with their raping and pillaging during the Boxer Rebellion. Along with the Americans, Germans, English, French, Russians, Italians and Austrian-Hungarians. China was literally a playgroud for them.
7 months ago
The early Brazilians had such a good thing going on, but they got too greedy, annihilated too many tribes, imported too many slaves., cut down too many trees.
Now look at Brazil, you guys fucking ruined it.
7 months ago
Uncircumscribed
Was the artist just going off what he assumed it looked like, or was he actually there and whitey actually had a cut dick?
7 months ago
Circumcision wasn't prevalent in europe tho
Its just since the late 19th century that americans have been mutilating their dicks
7 months ago
Statue of Westerner as a dvarapala in Thailand temple Wat Pho (rattanakosin period)
7 months ago
I remember reading an ancient Chinese chronicler, who was so digusted by the light skin and the beards of Indo-European nomads he compared them to monkies.
7 months ago
b-but pol told me africans were living in caves until whites came and uplifted them?
7 months ago
Benin was a bit different than the rest of West Sub-Saharan Africa. It's wrong lump in the entirety of Africa into one single entity, there are massive differences in culture between the regions.
7 months ago
That image shows barbarians from Poland.
This is how a russian official was depicted in the atlas.
7 months ago
Anyone have that weird picture when a bunch of american sailors or something are all over a sumo-wrestler?
7 months ago
