 had.
The people, he learned, had little more than his men. They barely had any corns of barley; instead, they would make flour by grinding up dried fish. The cakes they’d brought him were a delicacy that were only brought out on the most momentous of occasions.
Still, he and his men took everything they had. They loaded up their boats with everything they could carry and left the natives behind to starve.
The Heart of Darkness
These are horrifying stories, but they don’t come from enemies who were trying to slander a great man. Every one of these stories comes from Nearchus himself, each one written without the slightest show of remorse.
To Nearchus and the Greeks who read his writings, there wasn’t any need to justify what he’d done. He and his men needed food and these people were savages. Killing them was little different from killing animals.
It’s an eerie line our species has drawn time and time again: the line between civilized men and backward savages. There’s an unspoken idea that technology makes a people more human; that an advanced people’s lives are more valuable than those who lag behind.
We’ve seen how that line gets drawn countless times before – but what the story of Nearchus reveals is that it’s been there for thousands of years.
Perhaps this is a glimpse into a dark side of man: an instinct at work within us all, constantly weighing the value of other men’s lives and never coming up with an equal score.
Top image: 1893 Reconstruction of the Alexander Mosaic. Source: Public Domain
By Mark Oliver
Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri. “Book VIII”. Indica. Trans. E. Iliff Robson, 1933. Fordham University. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/arrian-bookviii-india.asp
Lawson, Russel M. “Nearchus.” Science in the Ancient World: An Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, 2004. https://books.google.com/books?id=1AY1ALzh9V0C&pg=PA165&dq=nearchus&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjU54nJvO3bAhWqy4MKHQtsDN0Q6AEISDAF#v=onepage&q=nearchus&f=false
Lendering, Jona. “Nearchus.” Livius.org. April 1, 2018. http://www.livius.org/articles/person/nearchus/?
Lendering, Jona. “Scylax of Caryanda.” Livius.org. April 12, 2018. http://www.livius.org/articles/person/scylax-of-caryanda/?