51 points

Yeah, it never occurred to anyone ever to stick their tongues in each others mouths until it was documented in ancient India.

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13 points
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We generally attribute discoveries to whoever documented it first. Itā€™s almost laughable to attribute it to the French based on a kissing style that was widespread there in 1923. Surely people were doing it before then. Yet, the Americans and British found it so unique they referred to it as French kissing.

Perhaps it was common before ancient India, but then the question is, why didnā€™t the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Chinese, Romans, and Greek document on it then?

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5 points

Arabic numerals came to Europe from India via Arabia. The Sine function does too, but itā€™s name is garbled and doesnā€™t mean anything.

Venetian blinds came from Persia via Venice.

Spanish Flu was everywhere, but everyone at the time was lying about it due to being at war, except for Spain.

Many First Nations peoples are known by what other peoples called them (often pejorative names) rather than their name for themselves.

Words usually arenā€™t authoritative declarations of truth, but rather snapshots of what was a useful distinction to someone somewhere a some time. Did the French think their style of kissing was a unique cultural phenomenon? Will Skibidi be known about in 500 years? No one documents graffiti, was it ā€œdiscoveredā€ by Pompeii?

We live in a truely unique age, where nearly any question can have a relavent answer of some kind in moments. We can see people streaming everyday things from around the globe, or find the best research about what we know about ancient peopleā€™s daily lives. Is any of this worth carving into a monument though? How many copies of an archeological journal are going to survive the ages vs copies of Game of Thrones? Iā€™d say there are countless things about our lives we think are special to today that even prehistoric people did, it just isnā€™t notable enought to build monuments to or copy manuscripts of.

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5 points

We barely document how we wipe our asses or shower because itā€™s such a mundane, day to day thing.

Writing was limited, so I hypothesize that people would focus on important things like tax collections, kingly births or even that cunt Ea-Nasir. Less so on kissing or things they would find mundane.

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3 points

Thatā€™s the thing. France and Belgium call french fries ā€œfritesā€ and ā€œfrietenā€, which just translates to ā€œfriesā€. Itā€™s other cultures that gave them (wrong) names because of how they got to know them.

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29 points

Anon didnā€™t say that it started in ancient India, just that the fact that it happened in ancient India proves that it didnā€™t start in France

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0 points

Itā€™s funny how France created all its neighbours! Britain, Russia, Italy, Spain! And proceeded to go into mortal wars with most of them!

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36 points

Britain is the land mass that includes England, Wales, and Scotland.

William the Conquerer was the first Norman king of England and never had power over Wales and he was mostly successful in gaining homage from King Malcolm III, but never king over the lands.

Edward I about two hundred years later almost pulls it off, but doesnā€™t quite get a firm grip on Scotland. James I in the early 17th century holds the crown for each of the lands. In 1707 they formalize the relationship with a treaty.

Soā€¦ No the French did not found Britain.

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4 points

You could, however, accurately say that a French family founded the modern British monarchy. That much is still true. The UK royal family can still trace its lineage directly to William the Conqueror.

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8 points

The Normans were Vikings - the then Frankish King, Charles, gave them land in north France if they agreed to shut the fuck up and stop murdering everyone in sight. They become known as ā€˜Northmenā€™ which contracted to ā€˜Norsemenā€™ which contracted to ā€˜Normanā€™.

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14 points

Itā€™s not just the royal family, other descendants of the french conquerors are also on average wealthier than the descendants of those that had been conquered.

One pretty striking statistic: ā€œFurthermore, Norman descendants also enjoy other privileges, including attendance at the best universities. In a recent study that examined the enrollment at Cambridge and Oxford over the last thousand years, it was revealed that at certain times, Norman names were 800% more common at Oxford than in the general population, and more recently, were at least twice as likely to found in that institutionā€™s enrollment.ā€

https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/10/last-1000-years-families-owned-england/

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18 points

Also Normans were descendants of viking settlers. So French didnā€™t technically fund England either (yes, Iā€™m being pedantic for the sake of the joke).

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3 points

The Anglos, Saxons, and Jutes were all tribes from what weā€™d call Germany. The Romans paved the first roads of London, and taught the Pagans about Jesus. And Rome was cosmopolitan, so it was a lot more than Italians in that army. England has also suffered under Danish/Scandinavian conquests small and large. The King Cnut was not a misspelling. His nephew, William is a Scandinavian settled in France.

Soā€¦ as far as ā€œblood and soilā€ goes, Britain, and her people, were always more of a group project.

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6 points
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Well, technically the French did not found Britain - they were Normans.

Who were the Normans? They were Scandinavian vikings who had been raiding France for decades. Eventually the French king decided to offer them lands (now called Normandy) in France if they promised to stop raiding and instead protect the French coast.

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2 points

Normans were in France since at least 3 generation before the britain invasion. So they were clearly french culturally and they were fully merged with the locals genettically. Also the invading army had troops from nearby french region like Brittany or Anjou.

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6 points

Meh, this is largely a debate over semantics since the mere notion of a ā€œFrench peopleā€ wouldnā€™t have made sense at the time. ā€œFrenchnessā€ isnā€™t an ethnicity, itā€™s a mix of many different peoples that mixed and intertwined over the years (celts, romans, germanic tribes, immigrants from all over Europeā€¦) and that eventually were all brought together as subjects of the french kingdom.

Normans werenā€™t ā€œfrenchā€ in the modern sense of the word, but then again very few people in what would later become modern France would have at that time : they all would have considered themselves ā€œProvenƧalā€, or ā€œBretonā€, or ā€œLorrainā€ who just happened to live in a Duchy that swore fealty to the king of France.

All things considered, William the Conqueror was a lord of the french kingdom, swore fealty to the king of France and spoke French, so he was no less (but no more, granted) French than any other of his peers. Whether you want to call him french is up to you but is largely an anachronism

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