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Tartaria (Alleged Empire; Alternative History)

Regarding beach towels. Terrycloth is first produced in the 1850s. This was used for toiletries but not beach towels. The only people with beach towels prior to that were the Ottomans, and they used linen. So that means that there could be beach towels in these photos, but there are not. So where are the towels? They are in the bathing boxes, where people were using them to dry off. Nobody took to lying on towels much until Coco Chanel, as that would have been considered stupid. Why would you lie on your towel and get them sandy or wet when you need them to dry yourself ? Lying on towels comes about as the result of sunning yourself, and Coco was the person who popularized that (for better or worse), and she doesn't start doing that until the 1920s, ergo, no beach towels. Note that there is a deck chair present in the bottom photo, and the first deck chairs were invented around 1887, so we can use that to provide a rough date for these photos i.e. the top one is before 1887 and the bottom one is after.
The idea that cultures change over time, and that norms change, and that you literally can't be familiar with norms that you do not know about, is really important in education.
It's also not taught nearly widely enough, at least in US schools. If you don't teach someone, and if they don't realize themselves, that they might not be able to assume that their concept of something applies to something from fifty years ago, or two hundred, they will wildly misinterpret things.
Stuff like "well, women must not have wanted to vote", or, "it wasn't in the Constitution because of (insert current cultural boogeyman here), not because the writers wanted things that way". Someone assuming that a lack of beach towels can't be real because their culture uses them is right up that alley.
 
The Victorians, though they loved beaches, were not silly enough to get their towels sandy; hence they are out of the way.

And though they loved the seaside, and indeed many seaside activities we still love, they had this thing different to us; they didnt go in the sea much.
Oh man, this must mean that I'M a Victorian - I don't go in the sea much either. Excuse me whilst I scuttle off to cover my ankles...
 
I'm sure I am not the only forum member to be intrigued by the layered complex ramblings of the YouTuber Barnabas Nagy.

He makes a huge range of very-doubtful outlandish claims (but- he can be interesting at some points). I shall try to paraphrase just some of what he appears to claim:

  • this is really the year 1019
  • the world experienced what he calls "a civilization reset" in the late Victorian era
  • that most history is fake
  • the world suffered a catastrophic 'mud flood', whereafter populations were replaced...with other popuations
  • the world had humanoid giants up until the mid-1850s
  • there was a massive empire he calls 'Tartaria' which was a pre-eminant civilisation prior to the Anglo-American Ascendency (I'm unsure quite where he places this....possibly Russia / Hungary / Austria / Turkey?)
  • He refers to 'Tartar architecture' (basically any ornate large buildings from c1850-1902), and claims immigrants to Australia found cities already 'built by the Tartars' (the same in the mid-west of the USA)
  • He believes the Panama and Suez canals were built before the 1600s
I think it's the sheer detailed claims that he makes, and his curious interpretation of evidence (eg his his unshakable conviction that the total absence of bathers' beach-towels in these 1900 photos, and their excessively-formal attire proves, to him, that these pictures have been staged)

I feel that he, himself, is a Fortean subject of interest. He might (I suspect) be mildly-psychotic, and certainly makes far too many weird and unsubstantiated claims (eg that metal lightning conductors are really collecting atmospheric electricity....which is nearly true, but not they way he means).

All very intriguing. And strange.

And whilst we do need to keep him at sanity's arm's length, there is something about his enthusiastic identification of beach tents really being Freemasonic temples that makes you want to listen to more of what he's saying (nb (listen, not necessarily directly believe)

So caution is advised. But find out more about him.

ps "NO BEACHTOWELS!!!"
pps don't forget the merchandise https://barnabasnagy.threadless.com
ppps never forget that crazy people sometimes tell the truth, even when that is not recognisable
I watched the first parts of a few of this dingbat's videos. He's either batshit crazy, or, more likely I think, has found a hook to get a lot of fools to send him money. Either way, his "product" is vapid and idiotic. What a waste of electrons.
 
I watched the first parts of a few of this dingbat's videos. He's either batshit crazy, or, more likely I think, has found a hook to get a lot of fools to send him money
Agreed, the vast majority of Barnabas Nagy's material is counterfactual candyfloss.

Some of his miscontrued postulations can be thought-provoking, but only in the way that you sometimes you have to filter the words of an insane person for fear of missing a possible essential nugget of truth. His Tartary ravings intrigue me, but only insofar as clumsy re-labelling and misidentification has shaped recorded history since its inception. Similarly, when he flags-up what he considers are anachronistic builds and foundations (eg all this diluvial mud-flood malarkey). I tend to look for his root references and sources (which can be so much more rewarding than his analysis).

The 'smoking gun' stuff about what he perceives as some global conspircy regarding the building of what he refers to as "star forts" across the world is a toe-curlingly embarrasing *total* misunderstanding about the elementary concepts enshrined within the logic of military architecture, best summarised as "defence in depth", and he just does not seem to invoke any level of baseline common-sense about this. He sees built shapes that, to him, are redolant with arcane mystery, yet they are simply classic convergent designs to provide enfilade lines of fire and visibility for maximum protection against invading forces that have existed globally ever since mankind first built fortifications.
 
In the latest FT, there's an article about Tartaria, which I had never heard of but seems to be the latest Flat Earth theory stand-in. Basically, a bunch of people on Google Image Search look up photographs of mostly colonial buildings (but also fancy fairgrounds of a hundred years ago) and believe them to be evidence of an Empire called Tartaria, which stretched across Europe and Asia and reached North America. There's no proof of this, and the theory ropes in such wackiness that the Tartarians were giants and such nastiness like anti-Semitism to explain where this civilisation went.

It's a mixture of too much time on their hands and misunderstanding of history that's convenient to their narrow worldview. Here's a good article on it:
Article

You will not be surprised to learn this stems from YouTube, and is gaining traction there and other social media platforms. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
 
Yes, well spotted! It appears to be gaining traction now, may be the next big thing in bullshit.
 
There's more about Tartaria here:

https://stolenhistory.net/search/105449/?q=TarTaria&c[title_only]=1&o=relevance

Whether Tartaria existed or not, I don't know. Neither does any of us know whether these people have too much time on their hands or even if they've misunderstood history or not. On that forum history is questioned in detail, and sometimes in minute detail, from many different sources and perspectives and generally arrive at a conclusion though not always.

Tartaria and all that has been around a long time. I remember reading a book about it in the 70's.

The article to my mind isn't a particularly good article. It starts with a conclusion, has little to really support that conclusion other than derision and then ends with the same conclusion it began with even should the conclusion be correct. Such is the way of modern media. Easy to digest snippets in little chunks that require little thinking about.
 
There are some very interesting strands within the current overall Tartaria fan-base narrative (nb I say 'interesting', but it may all still boil-down to misinterpretation).

Just as a sampler: the YouTube producer JonLevi has a substantial catalogue of commentary on the topic.

He points-up here what he considers to be massive scale and logistical improbabilities regarding the build of the 1876 Philadelphia World's Fair. I am intrigued about how something so large and apparently-substantial was built in such a short time (if all circumstances / contexts / constraints are genuinely as he portrays them). But I'm very doubtful as to whether his broader thesis (that such structures were built effectively in a pre-colonial America / Australia et al by a forgotten / supressed layer of civilisation) is a supportable hypothesis.

Please do watch it, and give your opinions as to what he's uncovering/identifying, if it's not what he believes it to be.

ps he has one of the calmest voices you've ever heard. That of course should not be taken as any passport for added veracity. But he's the stylistic opposite of many frenetic Youtube contributors

 
My ears pricked up at the word Tatararia because I lived for four years in Kazan, the capital of Tartastan in Russia.

This may be off topic, or it may not - but here's what I can tell you about the real Tartars, or at any rate the Volga Tartars.

Tartarstan is a `semi-autonomous Republic` within Russia. This means that it has some degree of ability to make its own decisions yet still is very much a part of the Russian Federation. (There's a fairly recent picture doing the rounds of Putin on a state visit there wearing a Tartar skull cap). It's capital is Kazan, on the river Volga - a city choc-a-bloc with colleges and universities which has the right to designate itself the `third capital of Russia` (number one being Moscow and two being Saint Petersburg).

Tartars are (mostly) an Islamic people. Very much for want of a better word, I would describe them as `Muslim-lite`. They might not drink, for example, but they don't go in for the hajib and other such body coverings. They mix well with their non-Muslim Russian counterparts. The population of Kazan is about fifty-fifty Non Muslim/Muslim and they are a pretty instructive example of how differing religious groups can live and work side by side.

Historically, they are said to be the descendants of the `Golden Horde` who made their way through Russia lead by Genghis Khan but taking along with them many other ethnic groups, including Finnish-Urgic tribes. So racially they appear quite diverse: some have a slightly `Mongolian` look about them, some are dusky and some are almost indistinguishable from other types of Europeans.(The screen actor Charles Bronson was of Tartar decent - and it showed).

Linguistically, they have their own language - which is a Turkic one. I had a colleague there who had lived in Turkey and picked up some Turkish. She could make herself understood using Turkish and could understand a bit of Tartar. However, in Kazan the vast majority of people spoke Russian - and I never troubled myself to learn any Tartar. (I did hear that in the surrounding villages there were people who could only speak Tartar - but never came across this myself).

In terms of cuisine the Volga Tartars go in for pies in a big way. This owes to the fact that they were once a nomadic people - and pies are ideally adapted to such a way of life. (One of their historical dishes consisted of a pie which had a whole in the top into which you could pour hot water - an early example of fast food!) They also sold pancakes with mashed potato inside and had a very nice watery type of chicken soup, which I miss.

Architecturally I can't tell you all that much. There were some very elaborate buildings in Kazan but I couldn't really tell you which were (so to speak) Russian-Russian and which were Russian-Tartar. However, if you want to see an impressive example of modern Tartar architecture - just do a Google search on the Kazan Mosque inside the Kremlin there.

It would be a hoot if my one time hosts turned out to be the remnants of a vanished great civilisation that spanned the world - alas, it's just such a lot of obvious cack!
 
In the FT it mentions the theory early Tartarians came from the Mongol Empire, and Genghis Khan and his hordes were white with red hair and blue eyes. There doesn't seem to be any proof of this, however, as is the case with a lot of this selective or fantastical history.
 
Disappointed to find out that Tartar Sauce whilst named after Tartars, does not come from Tartarstan.
 
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Disappointed to find out that Tartar Sauce whilst named atet Tartars, does not come from Tartarstan.
I think it's named after that nasty yellow deposit that appears on teeth if they're not brushed.
Well, that's my theory.
 
Let us bring this back to life.
 
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