Where Did The Terrorists Get The Nasty Habit of Beheading

I just recently watched the movie "Kingdom of Heaven". After I watch a historical movie like this, I like to check and see just how factual the story is, and if indeed everything is just "Hollywood", or if any of it is based on fact.

The story has quite a bit of fact as it turns out, and I have taken to looking at and studying the Crusades once again. I found this little tidbit about the fall of Jerusalem and the following pillage of that city.

http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/firstcrusade/Overview/Overview.htm

This is how the Christians handled things after the city fell. Their battle cry was Dieu li volt! (God wills it!).


The pillage of Jerusalem
From Raymond d'Aguilers, Historia francorum qui ceprint Jerusalem

Quote:

Now that our men had possession of the walls and towers, wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one's way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared with what happened in the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are normally chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, you would not believe it. Suffice to say that, in the Temple and Porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgement of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies. The city was filled with corpses and blood.From Raymond d'Aguilers, Historia francorum qui ceprint Jerusalem

So just in case you wonder where they got it from ...

Anon

American Indians learned the art of scalping from European bounty hunters, and therefore Indian scalping of innocents was excusable.

Later, stories started to circulate that the Europeans had invented scalping - and that colonists had actually taught it to the Indians. Axtell paid little notice until he started hearing those stories from academics. At that point, he and fellow historian William Sturtevant decided it was time to sort out the record.

Based on markings on skulls, drawings, linguistic clues, and the diaries of 15th- and 16th-century explorers, their conclusions were ultimately published in a 1981 book, "The European and the Indian," which argues that the practice of scalping in North and South America predated the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

"Scalps were not mere trophies or booty of war, however," Axtell wrote. "The whorl of hair on the crown and especially male scalp locks, braided and decorated with jewelry, paint, and feathers, represented the person's `soul' or living spirit. To lose that hair to an enemy was to lose control over one's life, to become socially and spiritually `dead', whether biological death resulted or not."

Axtell's research for his essays uncovered archaelogical, written, and linguistic evidence that points to an Indian origin of scalping. There have been pre-historic sites in North America where remains with lesions on the skull suggesting a scalping victim have been unearthed. Written accounts from European explorers during the 1500's and 1600's provide historical evidence of the practice. In 1535, Jacques Cariter saw "the skins of five men's heads, stretched on hoops…" Samuel de Champlain's travels to Canada and New England provided him with tales of scalping after a battle in 1609: "Approaching the shore each took a stick, on the end of which they hung the scapls (testes) of their slain enemies…" These stories bring up three points for Axtell to use in his argument. The first is the novelty of scalping to the European observer. Next, there is the evidence of skill and art involved that suggest a long tradition of the practice. Finally, the words that are used to describe "scalp" and "scalping" had no set vocabulary and no universal translation in European languages, but Indians of different backgrounds and languages had nouns and verbs to refer to the specific use of the terminology. Without a word for the action or object, it is unlikely that the European cultures had conceived of what they witnessed prior to their introduction to Native American customs, and therefore unlikely that it had been a practice brought to the New World by them.

Finn wrote:

American Indians learned the art of scalping from European bounty hunters, and therefore Indian scalping of innocents was excusable.

Wrong on two counts; American Indians did not learn scalping from the Europeans and no one is declaring scalping or beheading excusable.

xingu wrote:

Finn wrote:

American Indians learned the art of scalping from European bounty hunters, and therefore Indian scalping of innocents was excusable.

Wrong on two counts; American Indians did not learn scalping from the Europeans and no one is declaring scalping or beheading excusable.

I would not be surprised to discover that you are correct about the origins of Indian scalping. It would be a classic case of revisionist history proved wrong.

However, you are wrong that no one is declaring beheading excusable.

Any argument that barbaric actions learned from so-called civilized sources represents an implicit excuse. Why else make the comment? Clever irony? Consider the source.