[The Sabbaticus]

[noemon]

I started watching this documentary, the first thing they examine is the statue of the Dying Gaul.

The researcher says "this is essentially a piece of Roman propaganda, an image that Rome wanted to show its citizens after having subdued the Gauls".

There is a major problem with this guy cause the statue is Greek not Roman, commissioned in Asia Minor in modern-day Turkey after defeating the Gauls and resettling them at the border with Persia. And that's just the first 5 minutes.

edit: 10 minutes into the documentary, they examine a sword and its decoration, the guy then goes on to say:

"This tells us that the Celts had style and took great pride in their appearance, it is a far cry from the naked savage depicted by the Roman statue"

If the Greeks and Romans depicted savagery through nakedness then by that logic all of their Greatest Leaders depicted naked were thought to be savage, too?

[The Sabbaticus]

You have a point, but the statue is a Roman copy apparently. And both were meant to designate the victory over Celtic tribes.

[Potemkin]

"This tells us that the Celts had style and took great pride in their appearance, it is a far cry from the naked savage depicted by the Roman statue"

If the Greeks and Romans depicted savagery through nakedness then by that logic all of their Greatest Leaders depicted naked were thought to be savage, too?

Neil Oliver is a TV personality rather than a serious historian, noemon. This is why he does things like look at the ancient world through the lens of modern culture without apparently being aware that he is doing so (for example, his comment about the 'naked savage'). He is very skilled at popularising history and archaeology for a general audience, but I wouldn't expect him to win the Nobel Prize for Archaeology, if such a thing existed.

[Rich]

but I wouldn't expect him to win the Nobel Prize for Archaeology, if such a thing existed.

Then again not everyone expected Kissenger or Obama to win the Noble peace prize.

[Potemkin]

The Nobel Peace Prize may be a joke (and the Prize for Literature isn't far behind it), but the Prizes for the hard sciences are actually serious and are almost always well-deserved.

[The Immortal Goon]

Also, though Americans especially like to forget this, the BBC isn't the hand of an objective Enlightenment God. Even if they try to do things right, they're still a British company staffed by the British, paid by the British, mostly for entertainment.

The Irish version of this show was largely about how there's not really such a thing as being Irish and, by implication, there was really a lot of dumb fuss the simple Irish made up about the benevolent British who were acting out their roles as the hand of history—even though they made a mistake or two along the way.

Let's give everyone the benefit of the doubt at the BBC. How would a show go over with the English public if it was about them going around raping everyone indiscriminately and lining the pockets of their imperialist masters?

About as well as an American Vietnam show that didn't pander to the American public as being duped by bad guys, making a moral (if misguided) fight against something evil, with only the occasional mention of a massacre contextualized for the public as underlining a broader narrative about the United States.

That is to say, everyone that worked on it would never work again.

In this series, and the Irish one, there was some good information. But anybody would (and should) tell you that you need to look at the source of the information.