Don’t be a “quitter” who pretends to forget unresolved grievances. Instead, reopen ancient historical feuds and promote endless war!

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Background:

History, as it turns out, is both long and (generally) not well-recorded. We only have very fragmentary information about events that occurred more than a couple thousand years ago. For example, historians argue about some sort of gigantic invasion around the Mediterranean in ~1000 B.C. by the “Sea People” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples), but the actual identity—or reality—of these diabolical aggressors is unknown.

Fig. 1: These two (hypothetical) groups (left: yellow, right: blue) were ancient enemies, relentlessly slaughtering each other for 900 years, but now we’ve forgotten even the names of their civilizations!

Here are a few empires / groups who (as was customary in the Bronze Age) no doubt committed many objectionable actions in their conquests:

  • The Babylonians
  • The Sumerians
  • The “Sea People”

But as a result of people forgetting who is who, there are no existing geopolitical grievances related to these groups (i.e., there is no currently-existing “Akkadians vs. Sea-People” ethnic rivalry).

Proposal:

Thanks to genetic testing, it may be possible to identify the ancient origins of people in the modern day, thus re-opening once-long-forgotten feuds (Figure 2). The process is as follows:

  • 1. Obtain genetic samples from non-cursed mummies in ancient tombs in each civilization in question. For our example, we’ll use the ancient cities of “Sumer” and “Babylon.”
  • 2. Now, for each citizen in the modern-day, we can see if their genome is slightly more similar to the Sumerian or to the Babylonian ancestor. For example, a modern day “Sumerian” might be a 99.997% genetic match to the Sumerian ancestor, but only a 99.996% match to the Babylonian ancestor.
  • 3. Each modern day person is then assigned to be either “Sumerian Descendent” or “Babylonian Descendent,” and is given a pamphlet detailing the crimes that the other empire perpetrated on their own ancestors.
Fig. 2: Top row: these “gray” people live in harmony, and don’t know whether they’re descended from the inhabitants of the ancient city of Sumer (yellow box), or the ancient city of Babylon (blue triangle). Bottom row: genetic testing has revealed the ancestral lineage of each person, which now allows the blue and yellow groups to fight each other. (Also indicated is a purple “outsider” descended from some other ancient civilization, who may be exiled or shunned.)

PROS: It’s often said that it is preferable to confront problems, rather than ignoring / forgetting them.

CONS: Might cause endless war.