Ancient World Review

Human Sacrifice In Iron Age Europe

"Around a hundred bodies have been found in ... Irish bogs to date, some male, some female, and those of children too. Some were thought to be there by accident, perhaps as a result of falling into the bog and drowning. Others were considered to be formal (and some not so formal) burials, and others appear to be rather more sinister." Source: Irish Central.

The ritual sacrifice dramatized in this video shows the execution of Old Croghnan Man, a bog body currently on display in the National Museum of Ireland, which, among other things, has an exhibit called Kingship & Sacrifice. According to the museum's website, "the exhibition is centred on a new theory that connects human sacrifice with sovereignty and kingship rituals during the Iron Age. Research has indicated that other material connected with these rituals include: items of regalia; items associated with equestrian [horse] procession; weapons; feasting utensils; boundary markers; items associated with corn and milk production, such as quern stones and butter deposits known as ‘bog butter’."

One possible human sacrifice from this period is known as Tollund Man, "a naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 4th century BC, during the period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was found in 1950, preserved as a bog body, on the Jutland peninsula. The man's physical features were so well-preserved that he was mistaken at the time of discovery for a recent murder victim. Twelve years before Tollund Man's discovery, another bog body, Elling Woman, had been found in the same bog." (Wikipedia)

I think this describes Tollund Man, but I'm not sure.

"Scholars tend to agree that Tollund Man’s killing was some kind of ritual sacrifice to the gods—perhaps a fertility offering. To the people who put him there, a bog was a special place. While most of Northern Europe lay under a thick canopy of forest, bogs did not. Half earth, half water and open to the heavens, they were borderlands to the beyond. To these people, will-o’-the-wisps—flickering ghostly lights that recede when approached—weren’t the effects of swamp gas caused by rotting vegetation. They were fairies. The thinking goes that Tollund Man’s tomb may have been meant to ensure a kind of soggy immortality for the sacrificial object." Source: Smithsonian.

"'At an appointed time all tribes meet ….. in a forest consecrated by their ancestors, surrounded by fear, sacred from the dawn of time. There, on behalf of those assembled, they celebrate the commencement of their barbaric cult with a human sacrifice.'

"This is how the Roman historian Tacitus described the situation among the Semnones, a Germanic tribe, in the 1st century AD. This could provide the explanation of what happened to the woman from Huldremose, Tollund Man and Grauballe Man. More than a hundred bog bodies have been found in Denmark, which date from the period 800 BC to 200 AD. The cause of death has only been established in a small number of cases, where people have been strangled, hung or had their throats cut. Like the woman from Huldremose, the bodies were carefully placed in a bog afterwards, which points toward a sacrifice or another ritual act rather than an attack." Source: National Museum of Denmark.

Closed captions helpful.

"For Europeans dating as far back as the Neolithic period 6,000 years ago, bogs were both resources and possibly ominous supernatural portals, according to Ulla Mannering, an expert in ancient textiles at the National Museum of Denmark." Source: National Geographic (2014).

"The bogs' peat, which could be burned for heating homes, was valuable in tree-scarce Denmark, and an ore called bog iron was made into tools and weapons.

"Among prehistoric people, 'when you take things, you also offer things,' said Mannering.

"This may be why the Danish villagers would deposit 'gifts' of clothes, old shoes, slaughtered animals, battered weapons, and, for a period of 500 years, people into the black abyss of the bogs."

Related: Medieval Christian Book Discovered in Ireland Bog.

Diet At The Docks: Living And Dying At The Port Of Ancient Rome

"Analysis of plant, animal and human remains from Portus, the maritime port of Imperial Rome, has reconstructed for the first time the diets and geographic origins of its inhabitants, suggesting a shift in food resources following the Vandal sack of Rome in AD 455." Source: Science Daily.

Related: The University of Southampton Portus Project.

Book Review: The Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire by Michael Grant

The fall of Rome proves beyond doubt that one thing always leads to another, usually in unexpected ways. For example, when the Romans gave up the idea of conquering Germany and switched to a defensive strategy along the Rhine and Danube frontier, they succeeded in blocking the German advance into their territory, but they had no idea that they were starting a long chain of events which would eventually lead to the collapse of the western empire.

The Germanic tribes needed living space. Stymied in their attempts to spread west into Roman Gaul, the various tribes started to move to the east in the Second Century AD and ran into big trouble about a century later. In 372, according to The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, "the eastward expansion of the Ostrogoths provoked an explosive reaction from the Huns of the Volga Steppe." When the Ostrogoths intruded into their territory, the Huns drove all the German tribes back towards the Danube like a giant hammer, pounding them against the Roman frontier.

"...the Huns rolled forward to the Danube, crushing the Visigoths and enslaving the Gepids, who had the misfortune to occupy the Hungarian steppe. There the Huns settled down with their flocks, lords of a pasture that stretched back to the Caspian. In three years they had obliterated a century of German expansion." New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, page 10.

Over the next century, the Franks, Frisians, Suevi, Vandals, Alemanni and Visigoths crossed the frontier into Roman Gaul, but they didn't stop there. Driven by hunger, the need for land and their leader's private ambitions, the Visigoths sacked Rome and spread as far as Spain, establishing the Kingdom of the Visigoths in 418. Rome in the west, heart of the strongest and most successful empire the world has ever seen, no longer existed.

The story of the fall of the western empire is more complicated than this, of course, but the main question is why Rome couldn't defend its frontier. What had changed? One part of the answer is given by the famous classical historian Michael Grant in his short and relatively obscure book "The Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire." Briefly, Rome had been so weakened by two centuries of political instability, corruption, civil wars, military disasters and financial problems that it was no longer able to defend itself. In fact, according to Grant, the western empire should have collapsed in the Third Century, but managed to recover thanks to the efforts of a series of strong emperors who instituted much needed reforms.

"The fact that the Roman empire did not collapse in the 260s or 270s AD is one of the miracles of history." Grant, Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, Introduction, xvii.

In my opinion, the origins of Rome's political instability can be traced all the way back to Julius Caesar, at least. When the legions figured out that they could make or break emperors at will, they became the ultimate power brokers and this eventually developed into a state of constant chaos and civil war as ambitious military leaders bribed and murdered their way into power, only to be murdered themselves, sometimes after a reign of only a few days. The turnover in the Roman government between 235 and 284 AD was mind-boggling:

"In the age of the soldier-emperors, between the assassination of Alexander Severus, the last of the Severans, in 235 A.D. and the beginning of Diocletian's reign in 284, at least sixteen men bore the title of emperor: Maximinus (r. 235–38 A.D.), Gordian I and II, Pupienus and Balbinus (r. 238 A.D.), Gordian III (r. 238–44 A.D.), Philip the Arab (r. 244–49 A.D.), the Illyrian Decius (r. 249–51 A.D.), Trebonianus Gallus (r. 251–53 A.D.), Aemilianus (r. 253 A.D.), Valerian (r. 253–60 A.D.), Gallienus (r. 253–68 A.D.), Claudius Gothicus (r. 268–70 A.D.), Aurelian (r. 270–75 A.D.), Tacitus (r. 275–76 A.D.), Probus (r. 276–82 A.D.), Carus (r. 282–83 A.D.), Carinus (r. 283–84 A.D.), and Numerianus (r. 283–84 A.D.). Most were fierce military men and none could hold the reins of power without the support of the army. Almost all, having taken power upon the murder of the preceding emperor, came to a premature and violent end. Social life declined in Roman towns and instead flourished among the country aristocracy, whose secure lifestyle in large fortified estates foreshadowed medieval feudalism." (Source: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History)

Michael Grant's short book, actually a monograph of 68 pages with an appendix and notes, provides a good overview of the chaotic succession of emperors and the constantly changing state of Roman relations with the Germans and Persians at the time. In Part Two, he discusses the military, financial and religious reforms instituted by the "strong emperors" such as Diocletian and Constantine who emerged at just the right time and managed to pull the empire back from the brink--for a while. Grant's book gives one of the most coherent explanations available for why the western empire collapsed after the Ostrogoth's fatal encounter with the Huns on the Volga Steppe. The lesson is clear enough. A series of bad or ineffective leaders can destroy a civilization.

Sound familiar?

The Achaemenid Empire

"The Achaemenid Empire (c. 550–330 BC), also called the (First) Persian Empire, was an empire based in Western Asia, founded by Cyrus the Great. Ranging at its greatest extent from the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper in the west to the Indus Valley in the east, it was one of the largest empires in history, spanning 5.5 million square kilometers, and was larger than any previous empire in history." Source: Wikipedia.

The early history here is very murky and a lot of it seems to be based on one source: The Histories of Herodotus. Basically, Cyrus was a local monarch who revolted against the domination of the Median Empire. "According to the official story, the Achaemenid or Persian empire was founded by Cyrus the Great, who became king of Persis in 559 BCE and defeated his overlord Astyages of Media in 550." (Source: Livius.) Persis, aka Parsa or Persia, was the name of the region Cyrus controlled before he launched his rebellion.

According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia, "We are told that Cyrus was the grandson of Astyages (1) on his mother’s side, but that did not stop him wanting to shake off the Median yoke. By 552 BCE, he had formed the Persian tribes into a federation and begun a series of uprisings. When the inevitable showdown with his grandfather came in 550 BCE, the Medes mutinied and joined Cyrus to march on [the Median capital city of] Ecbatana.

"Cyrus took the title ‘Shah [‘King’] of Persia’ and built a capital on the site of his victory, which he called Pasargadae, after his tribe. Winning the Medes over had landed Cyrus with a vague, sprawling empire of countless different peoples ..." In other words, Cyrus was now in charge of an early multicultural empire which, like all multicultural empires, was highly unstable and could only be held together with force.

(1) Astyages was apparently the son of the Median king Cyaxeres. It's unclear if Astyages ever became king himself, but one way or another Cyrus was directly related to the royal family of the Medes. This is just another example of the old adage that revolutions usually come from the upper strata of society.

Next video is a lecture about the Cyrus Cylinder, written in the name of Cyrus after the conquest of Babylon. Actual lecture begins at app. 6:30.

The Achaemenid empire was only the first in a series of imperial dynasties described collectively as the "Persian Empire." The rise and fall of the Achaemenids was so complex and turbulent that I'm not even going to try to summarize it here. Different rulers came and went, many of them poisoning their previous overlords and rivals only to be poisoned in turn themselves. By the time Alexander the Great invaded Asia Minor around 330 BC, the last Achaemenid king, Darius III, had taken control of the empire and was trying to subdue Egypt (again). "In the ensuing chaos created by Alexander's invasion of Persia, Cyrus's tomb was broken into and most of its luxuries were looted," according to Wikipedia. Alexander was supposedly horrified by this desecration and ordered the tomb to be restored, but this may have been an act of political theater to help establish his control.

Just to put all of this into perspective, the Achaemenid empire, the largest empire in the world up until then, only lasted for around 220 years. That's about the same length of time that the United States -- "the greatest country in the world" -- has been in existence. Two-hundred and twenty years is about 9 generations, assuming 25 years per generation. For most of those people, the Achaemenid empire was their entire world and it probably seemed like it would last forever. And who knows how many brave patriots died for their glorious nation in the service of Cyrus and his successors? Looking back on it now, it's easy to see that the empire -- like all empires and nation states -- was just a transient power coalition based on violence, as ephemeral as the weather.

The Thracian Tomb Of Kazanlak

"Discovered in 1944, this tomb dates from the Hellenistic period, around the end of the 4th century BC. It is located near Seutopolis, the capital city of the Thracian king Seutes III, and is part of a large Thracian necropolis." Source: UNESCO World Heritage List.

Note: The tomb "comprises a narrow corridor and a round burial chamber, both decorated with murals representing a Thracian couple at a ritual funeral feast. The monument dates back to the 4th century BCE and has been on the UNESCO protected World Heritage Site list since 1979. The murals are memorable for the splendid horses and for a gesture of farewell, in which the seated couple grasp each other's wrists in a moment of tenderness and equality (according to Lyudmila Zhivkova—a view that is not shared by all specialists). The paintings are Bulgaria's best-preserved artistic masterpieces from the Hellenistic period." (Wikipedia)

The tomb itself is closed to the public, but a full-scale replica has been constructed nearby.

Were The Vandals The Victims Of Bad Press?

"The name of the Vandals is synonymous today with wanton violence and destruction. But it seems to me that, just like the Vikings, the Vandals have suffered from a bad press. The surviving accounts of their sack of Rome in AD 455, of their further piratical raids around the Mediterranean, and of their persecution of the Catholic inhabitants of North Africa are all presented through the eyes of their enemies and opponents: the Roman and Byzantine Empire and the established Church. Clearly, the Vandals were regarded as the ‘bad guys’ of the day and we too have been led into thinking of them as wild barbarians, intent on the destruction of Rome and its civilization." Source: The British Museum Blog.

Comment: The Vandals weren't exactly choir boys, but as far as I can tell they weren't all that different from everyone else back then. They were looking for land and wanted to form their own kingdoms, just like every other tribe fighting over the remains of the western Roman empire, an empire which was itself originally formed by conquering its neighbors.

The Vandals were a Germanic people or confederation of peoples who may have originated in the Iron Age Przeworsk culture (3rd century BC - 5th century AD) in what is now modern Poland, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). By 200 AD "they were already divided into at least two groups: Hasdings and Silings." According to the OCD, they "seem to have played no major role in the 3rd cent. invasions [of Rome], although contact with the Roman empire was plentiful."

That changed on Dec. 31, 406 AD, when the Vandals crossed the Rhine with two other barbarian tribes, the Alans and Suebi. (OCD) "After three years of widespread devastation in Gaul, they moved over the Pyrenees, and in 411 the invaders divided the Spanish provinces between them." The history here is complex, but the Vandals eventually crossed into Africa, captured Roman Carthage and established their own Vandal kingdom which was eventually conquered by the Byzantines.

The Vandals' methods were brutal and destructive -- they didn't get their name for no reason -- but so were the methods used by the Byzantine Christians and it's easy to forget that the Vandals were Christians themselves: Arian Christians. They persecuted the Catholics in North Africa, but the Catholics persecuted Arianism as well, so I don't see what the church has to complain about.

The Catholic Church makes a big deal about the way their brand of Christianity has been persecuted over the years, but the modern church is at least aware enough to recognize that it can be accused of "inconsistency" in the matter. The church tries to defend its own history -- the Inquisition, religious wars, etc -- by saying that its past intolerance wasn't the same as persecution because it was acting under a "lawful" mandate from God. Apparently, it isn't persecution if it involves "lawful coercion" by an "infallible" authority like the Catholic church:

"Such intolerance, however, is not the same as persecution, by which we understand the unlawful exercise of coercion. Every corporation lawfully constituted has the right to coerce its subjects within due limits. And though the Church exercises that right for the most part by spiritual sanctions, she has never relinquished the right to use other means." Source: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. [Emphasis added]

The legalistic handwaving on display here is truly mind-boggling, to say the least, but it's typical of the kind of propaganda states have always put out to justify their wars and violent suppression of "heresies" of one kind or another. Apparently, the Catholics regard the use of torture to force confessions, burning witches at the stake and massacring heretics to be coercion "within due limits." With this kind of record, you have to wonder what the church considers to be out of bounds when it comes to the use of force.

If the Vandals were notorious for their violence, it's because they were better at it than other groups. Unfortunately for them, they weren't good enough to consolidate their successes and hold their new African kingdom for very long. The winners write the history, so we remember the Vandals as brutal barbarians. That's the way it goes.

Genetic Variation Of The Scythians On The Pontic-Caspian Steppe

Video from 2014. Part Two here.

"The genetic variation within the Scythian nomad group is so broad that it must be explained with the group assimilating people it came in contact with. This is shown in a new study on Bronze and Iron Age genetics of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, situated in the Black Sea region." Source: Science Daily (2018).

"...The vast area of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe region has worked as a motor for demographic events throughout Eurasia, especially in the western part of the meta-continent. Crucial events in European history and prehistory can be traced back to people of the Steppe. Including the invention of horseback riding, chariots, a new type of warfare and the spread of Indo-European languages [1]."

[1] "The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory or Kurgan model) or steppe theory is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe, Eurasia and parts of Asia. It postulates that the people of a Kurgan culture in the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). The term is derived from the Russian kurgan (курган), meaning tumulus or burial mound." (Wikipedia)

The Valley Of The Thracian Kings

"The Valley of the Thracian Rulers is a popular name which was made public by the archaeologist Georgi Kitov and describes the extremely high concentration and variety of monuments of the Thracian culture in the Kazanlak Valley [in modern Bulgaria]. It is believed that there are over 1500 funeral mounds in the region, with only 300 being researched so far." Source: Wikipedia.

One of the spectacular discoveries made in this area, the Kazanlak Tomb, was discovered in 1944. According to Wikipedia, the "vaulted-brickwork 'beehive' (tholos) tomb ... is part of a large royal Thracian necropolis in the Valley of the Thracian Rulers near their ancient capital of Seuthopolis in a region where more than a thousand tombs of kings and members of the Thracian aristocracy can be found."

Video from 2011.

The Immortal Publius Quinctilius Varus

Publius Quinctilius Varus is a tragic figure remembered only because of his disastrous defeat in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 AD), aka the Varian Disaster and "Rome's greatest defeat." I wonder what he would have thought if he'd known he would gain immortality by committing such a gigantic blunder that it would end up being named after him? There are many paths to fame, I guess, and screwing up big time is one of them.

According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), 3rd ed. revised, Varus came from a "patrician family that had been of no importance for centuries. He owed his career to the favor of Augustus," who probably regretted his choice later on when Varus lost three legions in the forests of Germany. Many of the defeated Roman soldiers were enslaved or sacrificed to the Germanic gods, according to Tacitus. Not a good end to a legionary's career.

Varus must have been a reasonably competent man to win the favor of a capable administrator like Augustus. "Varus became proconsul of Africa (?7-6 BC), and then legate of Syria. When Judea revolted after the death of Herod the Great, he marched rapidly southwards and dealt firmly with the insurgents." (OCD)

"Next heard of as legate of the Rhine army [governor of Germania] in AD 9," Varus fell victim to geography and the German tribes' resistance to Roman rule:

According to Livius, "Varus and the three legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX were somewhere near the river Weser (perhaps near modern Minden) when he learned of an insurrection in the west. He decided to return to the Rhine and make a detour through the rebellious area. The only road led through a small strip of accessible land; to the south, there were the inaccessible hills of the Teutoburg forest, and to the north, marshes made progress difficult. It was the perfect place to trap the heavy legionaries."

The terrain probably made it impossible for Varus to cover his flanks, but he seems to have assumed that he wouldn't have problems from the local Germanic tribes. As it turned out, this was a mistake:

"[He] was treacherously attacked in difficult country by Arminius [chief of the Cherusci], whom he had trusted. The Roman army was destroyed ... and Varus took his own life." (OCD)

Arminius apparently lured Varus into the trap by posing as a friend of Rome and informing him of the rebellion in the west. In a disgraceful act all too familiar from recent history, Augustus blamed Varus not only for the disaster, but for the failure of his entire policy in Germany:

"Varus was made the scapegoat for the signal failure of Augustus' whole German policy. He is alleged to have been grossly extortionate in Syria, torpid and incompetent in his German command." (OCD)

This just begs the question, of course. After all, if Varus was so incompetent and corrupt, why was he given command in Germania in the first place? In any case, the defeat had major repercussions for the Roman empire, which halted its attempts to conquer the Germans and limited its frontier to the Rhine, laying the foundations for many more calamities to come.

Conclusion: If you want to go down in history, you have to either achieve great things like Thomas Edison, kill someone important (like Lee Harvey Oswald), or, like Publius Quinctilius Varus, fail in such a spectacular fashion that your name lives on forever.

Tattoos In The Ancient World

"Tattooing has been practiced across the globe since at least Neolithic times, as evidenced by mummified preserved skin, ancient art, and the archaeological record. Both ancient art and archaeological finds of possible tattoo tools suggest tattooing was practiced by the Upper Paleolithic period in Europe. However, direct evidence for tattooing on mummified human skin extends only to the 4th millennium BC." Source: "History of Tattooing," Wikipedia.

"... tattooed mummies have been recovered from at least 49 archaeological sites including locations in Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia, western China, Egypt, Sudan, the Philippines, and the Andes." In 2016, Nature reported the discovery of "[a] mummy from ancient Egypt ... heavily tattooed with sacred symbols, which may have served to advertise and enhance the religious powers of the woman who received them more than 3,000 years ago."

According to Smithsonian Magazine (2007), "... the earliest known examples [of tattoos] were for a long time Egyptian and were present on several female mummies dated to c. 2000 B.C. But following the more recent discovery of [Otzi the Iceman] from the area of the Italian-Austrian border in 1991 and his tattoo patterns, this date has been pushed back a further thousand years when he was carbon-dated at around 5,200 years old."

"Otzi had 61 tattoos across his body, including his left wrist, lower legs, lower back and torso." Smithsonian Insider (2015).

"Some tribal cultures traditionally created tattoos by cutting designs into the skin and rubbing the resulting wound with ink, ashes or other agents; some cultures continue this practice, which may be an adjunct to scarification. Some cultures create tattooed marks by hand-tapping the ink into the skin using sharpened sticks or animal bones (made like needles) with clay formed disks or, in modern times, needles." Source: Wikipedia.

Related: Ancient Tattoo Techniques.

Otzi the Iceman's tattoos may have been a form of acupuncture. According to the International Business Times (2015), "eighty per cent of [Otzi's] tattoos had been found along acupuncture meridians used to treat back pain and abdominal problems, which Otzi suffered from ... If correct, the tattoos would predate the first recorded use of acupuncture in China by 2,000 years."

"Pre-Christian Germanic, Celtic and other central and northern European tribes were often heavily tattooed, according to surviving accounts, but it may also have been normal paint. The Picts may have been tattooed (or scarified) with elaborate, war-inspired black or dark blue woad (or possibly copper for the blue tone) designs. Julius Caesar described these tattoos in Book V of his Gallic Wars (54 BC). Nevertheless, these may have been painted markings rather than tattoos." Source: Wikipedia.

Note: According to Caesar, "All the Britons dye their body with woad, which produces a blue color, and shave the whole of their bodies except the head and upper lip." (The Conquest of Gaul, Book V.14)

In Greece and Rome, tattoos were mostly used for identification purposes -- much like brands on cattle -- but this changed over the centuries, at least among certain classes of society:

"... amongst the Greeks and Romans, the use of tattoos or 'stigmata' as they were then called, seems to have been largely used as a means to mark someone as 'belonging' either to a religious sect or to an owner in the case of slaves or even as a punitive measure to mark them as criminals. It is therefore quite intriguing that during Ptolemaic times when a dynasty of Macedonian Greek monarchs ruled Egypt, the pharaoh himself, Ptolemy IV (221-205 B.C.), was said to have been tattooed with ivy leaves to symbolize his devotion to Dionysus, Greek god of wine and the patron deity of the royal house at that time. The fashion was also adopted by Roman soldiers and spread across the Roman Empire until the emergence of Christianity, when tattoos were felt to 'disfigure that made in God's image' and so were banned by the Emperor Constantine (A.D. 306-373)." Source: Smithsonian Magazine.

Comment: Tattoos, piercings and scarification are usually associated with barbarian tribes and the lower orders of society. In the classical Mediterranean world, tattooing as a decorative art seems to have been practiced mostly by the more primitive cultures of Europe, Asia and the Orient. In a way, the popularity of tattoos in any given culture could be seen as an indicator of that culture's social development. The more barbaric the culture, the more tattoos. There also seems to have been an inverse relationship between tattoos and social status. In Greece and Rome, for instance, soldiers, slaves, criminals and some priests and acolytes were frequently tattooed, but I'd be amazed to find out that someone like Tacitus had a tramp stamp.

Tattooing seems to become more widespread in civilizations on their way down.  For instance, "the decline of the Ptolemaic dynasty began under the reign of Ptolemy IV," the tattooed Egyptian pharaoh, according to Wikipedia. This is just a theory, but I'd say that the rising popularity of tattoos is a symptom of cultural decay. For example, I don't think it's an accident that the use of tattoos "spread across the Roman Empire until the emergence of Christianity" or that tattoos are becoming a cultural norm in modern Europe and the United States. I guess you could call this the Tattoo Theory of Social Collapse. As a civilization declines into the Third World, more and more people start to cover themselves with body art. I have no idea why this would happen, but maybe the masses are responding in an unconscious way to the barbarism that is slowly engulfing them.