Tuesday 14 June 2011

To the Victor Goes the Pen

Ever heard of Carthage ? You know, that little place just to the lower left of Italy's coast. There's a high probability you haven't. For a civilization like the Carthaginians, who were based in Carthage (modern-day Tunis), who were arguably one of the strongest nations during the Roman era. Carthage is the home of Hannibal Barca, one of the greatest military tacticians of his time. 

The Carthaginian Empire in 264 BC (Source:Aldan-2)
Carthage's might was almost alike that of the Romans, so powerful was Carthage that Rome had engaged in a series of wars with Carthage over superiority in the Mediterranean, these wars were called the Punic Wars.
A clear testimony to this might was the fact that Hannibal led an expedition to Rome, bringing with him elephants (and the works). But, in the end, Rome was the victor and Carthage was sacked.

We know very little of Carthage's history aside from those from Roman sources (which were biased). The reason was that the Romans destroyed practically everything pertaining to the Carthaginian nation. Its history was lost as their tablets and scrolls were burned and destroyed. We have no idea of Carthage's religion at the time, aside from Roman sources which claimed they were Pagans and such.

This is a textbook example of a phenomenon that had gripped Man's history , many times did the victor wield the power, both literally and metaphorically speaking.
They wielded the pen of history at the time, they could choose to include or eradicate or demonize whoever they wished. This had worked for many times, in fact, we only know about Carthage via Archaeology and (once again) biased Roman historical tablets.

But, this is being challenged nowadays. In the ever-increasing and technological world, humans are closer than they were before. We can now inform and relate to each other information at the blink of an eye even if we are hundreds of miles apart

This proves critical, it allows the observer to have an opposing view of a particular situation. One that was not available before, for example Romans claimed Carthage had human sacrifices but records do not exist that both endorse this view nor oppose it, hence we often have to accept it.

Twitter and Facebook, seen as the vanguard of this new offensive try to break this phenomenon and give the opposing view, the defeated one's view on how it was. No longer would History simply vanish before our eyes, everything nowadays is recorded and we could safely say that the Pen is no longer with the Victor.

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