Deeper Roots

[zhao]

Mr. Tea you misunderstand the purpose of "not coming from Germany or the Alps". it is not not a direct statement of the obvious, but rather to illustrate the plausibility of the African and Asian roots of European culture.

and if you are at all right about the African and Asian roots of European culture being taught the world over, this has changed only in certain academic circles, and only during the last decade or so; and does NOT mean that it is "widely known and accepted".

typical white european response to deny the massive influence of racist ideology in shaping consensus world views, today or any day.

"you are just paranoid". "you are just under informed". "you don't realize that these racist ideas only exist in the past and not today"

typical bullshit.

 

[droid]

I'm curious Zhao - have you attended a European school or University? Have you canvassed tens of thousands of professors and students for their opinions? Have you reviewed the syllabi of thousands of European universities and schools? Can you provide a history of changes in the teaching of ancient history in Europe based on verifiable data? How prevalent are the views you claim are predominant in comparison to other theories in percentage terms? Have you done a survey of history students or the general populations of different European countries?

The reason I ask, is that when you throw around accusations like this:

typical white european response to deny the massive influence of racist ideology in shaping consensus world views, today or any day.

(Other than the irony of assuming that there is a homogeneous 'white European' anything) You really should have something other than opinion to back it up.

BTW - I asked 6 people about the origins of Greek culture. One said they thought "it came from nowhere - formed itself". One said "Egypt". One said "the Middle East/North Africa", 3 said "Ive never really thought about it".

 

[swears]

i think this is bordering dangerously to the kind of historical relativism that i absolutely do not endorse -- "no one can be sure what happened so there is no such thing as truth and it's a waste of time worrying about it".

I thought Slothrop made some very good points there.

Realising that there are limits to what we may be able to uncover or conceptualise in regards to the objective truth of the world or its past is not relativism. It's actually more within the spirit of realism or scepticism.

Relativism is believing any old tosh you like because it's all equally "valid".

Just because we admit we don't know the answer to a particular question or even the best way of asking it is not the same as saying there is no answer in the first place.

 

[STN]

I was taught that it mostly came from Egypt in my suburban comprehensive school in the 90s. I certainly don't doubt that a white, Eurocentric bias has shaped views of history, but I believe this is changing and has been for a while.

 

[zhao]

I'm curious Zhao - have you attended a European school or University? Have you canvassed tens of thousands of professors and students for their opinions? Have you reviewed the syllabi of thousands of European universities and schools? Can you provide a history of changes in the teaching of ancient history in Europe based on verifiable data? How prevalent are the views you claim are predominant in comparison to other theories in percentage terms? Have you done a survey of history students or the general populations of different European countries?

You really should have something other than opinion to back it up.

i obviously have not done the extensive polls and surveys, yet the false beliefs and attitudes i describe stem from far more than mere "opinion", but rather an accumulation of observation both directly, and of portrayal of ancient Greece in the media.

things might have indeed changed more rapidly and thoroughly in academic circles than i am aware, but i maintain that it is not a stretch to say that a Eurocentric Greece with its debt to Africa and Asia drastically down-played and systematically under-stated is still ubiquitous, and by far the prevalent conception in the culture at large.

BTW - I asked 6 people about the origins of Greek culture. One said they thought "it came from nowhere - formed itself". One said "Egypt". One said "the Middle East/North Africa", 3 said "Ive never really thought about it".

i imagine someone as well read and thoughtful as yourself would hang with a similarly educated crowd; and yet even among the people around you there is 1 out of 3 which thinks Greece developed independently.

i have spoken to many friends and people i meet about this as well, and i have found Eurocentric attitudes WRT to this by far the most popular.

i will make a point of continuing this survey, perhaps even in a bit more formal fashion, and report back my findings. (would be nice to hear the results of anyone in this thread too, if you can be bothered)

 

[zhao]

Realising that there are limits to what we may be able to uncover or conceptualise in regards to the objective truth of the world or its past is not relativism. It's actually more within the spirit of realism or scepticism.

yet there has been a ton of work done on the issue at hand, and it is not realistic to be sceptical about the "Revised Ancient Model" put forth by Bernal, based on a "lack of information", because there is plenty of information.

Relativism is believing any old tosh you like because it's all equally "valid".

which is what ends up happening, defaulting to a consensus view of the world (which i see as largely Eurocentric and in denial about those deep roots)

Just because we admit we don't know the answer to a particular question or even the best way of asking it is not the same as saying there is no answer in the first place.

saying "i don't know where Greek culture comes from" is willfully ignoring the solid case many have made for identifying EXACTLY where it came from.

it's like sayin "i don't know where Japanese culture comes from". such an attitude is anything but "neutral".

 

[luka]

i'm reading the Odysessy. have you read it? or any Plato? different people by all accounts. that is, different ethnic groups. don't downplay the achievements of the greeks just to redress what you (rightly in my opinion) see as an imbalance in history as it is commonly understood.

 

[luka]

greek culture had its antecedents but no one, least of all Bernal is claiming they 'stole' their entire culture from anyone else.
roman culture took more from the greeks than the greeks took from their predecessors but still retains a great deal of its own character.
and why all this emphasis on egypt. the british museum put on a fascinating exhibition on the sub saharan civilizations a few years back, if you really want to talk about 'black' civilizations.

 

[droid]

i obviously have not done the extensive polls and surveys, yet the false beliefs and attitudes i describe stem from far more than mere "opinion", but rather an accumulation of observation both directly, and of portrayal of ancient Greece in the media.

things might have indeed changed more rapidly and thoroughly in academic circles than i am aware, but i maintain that it is not a stretch to say that a Eurocentric Greece with its debt to Africa and Asia drastically down-played and systematically under-stated is still ubiquitous, and by far the prevalent conception in the culture at large.

I'm not sure it is fair to say that TBH... and observation is intrinsically linked to the bias of the observer as we all know.. point is that your throwing around a lot of very precise and severe criticisms without a solid basis (IMO).

i imagine someone as well read and thoughtful as yourself would hang with a similarly educated crowd; and yet even among the people around you there is 1 out of 3 which thinks Greece developed independently.

It was one out of six - you've ignored the 'Ive never thought about it' answers - if the eurocentric view was as pervasive as you claim this would be the default? and no - the people i work with aren't particularly well read or thoughtful!!

Why all this talk of Egypt anyway - what about the Sumerians? Also, didn't the Greeks steal their language from the Phoenicians?

 

[polystyle]

Mediacene age

I'm going to keep trying to elbow some info - in this case 'media' or 'news' into the thread-
The branding of ancient finds ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/business/media/19fossil.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
:slanted:

 

[swears]

saying "i don't know where Greek culture comes from" is willfully ignoring the solid case many have made for identifying EXACTLY where it came from.

Nobody is denying the influence of Egypt on the culture of ancient Greece. But the idea that it was an EXACT "parent and child" relationship is problematic. It depends what you consider to be important or innovative about the Greeks, and what period of their history you're talking about. For example, concepts like democracy or the Platonic ideal would have been entirely alien to the Egyptians.

 

[swears]

This reminds me of the time I used the word "obviously" in an A-level history essay. My tutor circled it and wrote "In history, NOTHING is obvious!" in the margin.

 

[Slothrop]

Nobody is denying the influence of Egypt on the culture of ancient Greece. But the idea that it was an EXACT "parent and child" relationship is problematic. It depends what you consider to be important or innovative about the Greeks, and what period of their history you're talking about. For example, concepts like democracy or the Platonic ideal would have been entirely alien to the Egyptians.

Yeah, exactly. It's like arguing over whether ska is a continuation of US rnb or a Jamaican innovation. When it's really both - you can easily identify stylistic continuities and equally easily identify new and original elements, but debating whether the innovations somehow 'outweigh' the continuities implies that you've got some sort of absolute weighting system, which is pretty much nonsense. It's like asking what colour a bowl of smarties is.

Arguably this is going down the same alley as the earlier classicists did but in the opposite direction - taking the complicated weave of continuities, evolutions, ruptures, progressions and regressions that have marked the development of society and then applying a simplistic label - "the birth of modern civilization" - to part of it in order to fit with your [euro/afro]-centric mythology. Neither strikes me as good scholarship.

(NB - I haven't read Bernal so I'm not claiming that this is what he says.)

 

[Mr. Tea]

Mr. Tea you misunderstand the purpose of "not coming from Germany or the Alps". it is not not a direct statement of the obvious, but rather to illustrate the plausibility of the African and Asian roots of European culture.

and if you are at all right about the African and Asian roots of European culture being taught the world over, this has changed only in certain academic circles, and only during the last decade or so; and does NOT mean that it is "widely known and accepted".

typical white european response to deny the massive influence of racist ideology in shaping consensus world views, today or any day.

"you are just paranoid". "you are just under informed". "you don't realize that these racist ideas only exist in the past and not today"

typical bullshit.

What the hell are you on about now? Where did I say anything about "the world over"? I haven't been educated "the world over", I was educated in the UK in the 80s and 90s. Ergo, I can talk about my own experiences but not the experiences of others. You would do well to apply this to yourself.

Look, can you honestly not see how foolish you're making yourself sound, as someone who was born in China and grew up in the US (or were you born in the US too? well, whatever), by lecturing people brought up in the UK about the awful racist lies were we undoubtedly indoctrinated with at school? As far as I know you haven't taken a history GCSE or A-level recently. Why don't you tell us about your own experiences in American schools? I wouldn't presume to tell you what's on the American high-school history syllabus because clearly I don't know it.

And to start flinging around a highly offensive and emotive slur like 'racist' whenever anyone suggests, however politely, that you might be incorrect in your assumptions about a school system you have no knowledge of, or even has any view of history and culture that's not a carbon copy of yours, just makes you come across like a grade-A tosser.

Typical zhaoist response to the suggestion that possibly not all white Europeans are misinformed, rabid racists.

 

[nomadthethird]

In my craptastic public school, they taught a very vague, very PC version of the Pangea theory as the origin of civilizations as we know them.

(I can't speak to Zhao's experiences, but I don't know of any school system that still teaches Western primacy and cultural sovereignty...)

 

[zhao]

i am talking about the heavily understated and very much under represented massive influence of African and Asian civilizations on Greece in the world at large, and not what schools are teaching.

schools may teach that race doesn't exist, it does not follow that the population knows it or understands it or don't still go about business as if it did.

from my own experience, i have a BFA, my parents both have Doctorate degrees, all of their friends highly educated, and all of mine as well. and last year when i found Black Athena was the first time i had read about this "massive influence". it was pretty much news to me, and i realized that what i thought before was a gross Eurocentric distortion, and a heavy down-play of those deeper roots.

again, as i said before, the schools may have indeed changed their tune more completely than i am aware, but what i perceive of the world at large, both from personal experience and media representation, i maintain that this understatement and down-play, if not complete denial, is still very much prevalent all over the world.

 

[zhao]

oh and Mr. Tea, you are an idiot.

 

[zhao]

observation is intrinsically linked to the bias of the observer as we all know..

indeed. and the same is applicable to you as well.

 

[Mr. Tea]

oh and Mr. Tea, you are an idiot.

*helpfully picks up your toys and hands them back to you*

Zhao, have you noticed that as a general rule you and I get along quite well except in those threads where you have a 'radical agenda' to push, where your motive for debate seems to stem from an unshakeable conviction that you alone are unquestionably correct and everyone else is wrong? It's not even as if anyone in this thread has said what you'd clearly love one of us to say, i.e. "Greek culture owed nothing to African/Middle Eastern cultures." Everyone, as far as I can see, has made it clear they do not agree with that statement; in fact we've all acknowledged a very big influence, and also that this was downplayed for a long time, historically. What people are questioning is that this outdated view is so widely held today, and your response has been to yell "Well everyone knows it is!" and call us idiots. Hardly rhetorical dynamite.

It's just that because so much of your self-esteem seems to come from this idea you have of yourself as a great righter-of-wrongs and slayer-of-racism that when someone so much as suggests that, in some particular area of their experience, there isn't quite so much racism as you think there is, you fly off the handle and start branding them racist. You're like a witch-finder or something: either someone admits guilt, in which case great, they're guilty - or they deny it, in which case they're lying because they're an evil witch!

 

[droid]

indeed. and the same is applicable to you as well.

Yes of course, but Im not making sweeping assertions based purely on my personal observations and little else.