Quiz #1 Motives for Genocide

Where did agriculture originate?

Agriculture developed in the Fertile Crescent, and the first city-states were about 5-6 thousand years ago

Are centralised states or nomadic societies less dangerous?

The data show that established centralised states are much safer than hunter-gatherer/nomadic societies, which are much more dangerous. They have much higher levels of violence

How did Sparta operate?

Sparta was a very xenophobic state that only allowed citizenship for a small number of Spartan-born soldiers

Sparta, in many ways, was an agricultural society—it didn’t have many cities, but it was very expansionist

How did Anthens operate?

Athens was a very cosmopolitan society, whereas Sparta was more inland

Did Rome commit genocide against Carthage?

The Roman Empire's destruction of the city of Carthage is also a prefiguration of genocide

Rumour has it they salted the Carthaginian soil so nothing could grow there

Why did the Roman settler Cato hate Carthage?

Because he greatly idealised the farmer rather than the merchant—this is why he hated Carthage, because he thought it was too merchant-like

Did racial thinking exist in the ancient world?

Not really. In Cato’s case, destroying Carthage was strictly geopolitical. Racism wasn’t innate—it wasn't deterministic of how humans should act; it was socially constructed

Primary cause of genocide in the middle ages

Religion

What was the Spanish’s main motive for killing?

Economic purposes; they really wanted what the Indigenous people had (farmland, gold, etc.)

They were not necessarily racist, for economics was the factor

A lot of the killings were to inflict terror on the populations