🚀 go-pugleaf

Most impressive!  Finally someone who can factually argue the
nitty-gritty of ancient history.  This group is getting better viewpoints
all the time.

Regards,
Larry G.


"Everett Hickey" <lithium@ev1.net> wrote in message
news:3bbc6bd5$1_2@newsa.ev1.net...
| "Mapanari" <Mapi@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
| news:xINu7.18248$Kp2.10696034@typhoon.austin.rr.com...
| >
| > | Ummm... none of those things are specific to the west.  Cleanliness is
| > | something that most of the west gets low scores on, compared to many
| eastern
| > | cultures where cleanliness is held in much higher regard.
| >
| > Cleanliness is the hallmark of civiliazation, which is why the European,
| > Japanese
| > and other cultures that ascribe to those values are superiour in just
| about
| > every
| > way to others that don't.
| > Camel jockey's are not very clean.  Just ask one to eat with both hands.
|
| You don't know much about their culture, do you?  On average, when they
have
| access to it, they bathe more than once a day - being clean is part of
their
| religion, instead of just a 20th century fad like in the west.  It took a
| major marketing campaign by plumbing manufacturers just to get us to bathe
| once a day.  Sounds a lot like people who called native americans
"filthy",
| because they lived outside - even though they took more care of themselves
| than the people who called them that.
|
| >  Organization is
| > | non-specific in general.  Tilling soil - global, ditto irrigation
(which
| was
| > | practically invented in that region).
| >
| > The people who live in the Euprhates valley are so genetically,
culturally
| > and socially difernet from the first farmers of 20,000 years ago that
it's
| > meaningless to try and compare them to the present day inhabitants.
|
| Regardless... they do it... and some of their methods are more advanced
than
| what we employ, mostly out of neccessity.  You spoke as if they had no
real
| agriculture to speak of.
|
| >   Equality for women is a different
| > | matter - but then again, much of the west was incredibly slow to adopt
| it
| > | where other cultures embraced it early on.  Child sex toys -
| imprisonable
| > | here, executable there.  As for education, it's more a matter of what
| than
| > | how much.  The middle east has a history of education, and preserved
| much of
| > | what europe lost during the dark ages.  The primary difference is much
| of
| > | their education is theological whereas ours is secular.
| >
| > I could go into a 3 page long rebuttal of this point, but I fear it
would
| be
| > useless, although interesting, but too time-consuming.
| > Suffice it to point out who built the library of Alexandria and what
| > civilization
| > imparted the science of bibliography, cataloging and the whole concept
of
| > historical writing, research and compilation thereof.
| >
| > The fact that there concept drifted into the middle east through
| greco/roman
| > conquest and later Byzantine, makes the whole concept of learning,
| schools,
| > libraries and literature a greco/roman/eurpean concept and not a camel
| jockey
| > one.
|
| The Greeks brought much of it in (though cataloging of data came to Athens
| through Persia, as did many other organizational skills).  However, the
| Greeks and Romans couldn't hold onto it when their civilizations
collapsed -
| it was arabs who not only maintained everything they could (the loss of
The
| Library was a harsh strike against that), but continued on - pushing
further
| into mathematics and the sciences (Euclid brought us geometry, but most
| arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, and some of the earliest stirrings of
| what would lead to calculus, came from the middle east during the Pax
| Islamica).
|
| That region fell on hard times later, and all that changed - but history
is
| irrelevant.  My point is the things you originally mentioned as an attack
| are not very well grounded.  The fact that the only part of that you
really
| responded to was historical doesn't prove your point much.  The closest
you
| came was treatment of women (they're way way behind in that area), and
| education (they go futher into it than we do in some areas, but they dont'
| exactly have any major universities with a global draw).
|
| > It's nice to read parts of history, and whatever pc professor taught you
| last,
| > usually to denigrate "Dead white men history", but it doesn't make it
so.
|
| I've torn through a pretty good number of history books, particularly ones
| that try not to hold any viewpoint at all.  I also like access to direct
| archaeological data instead of other's interpretations of it.  I have no
| intention of denigrating western culture - but I get a strong feeling that
| you're either very highly biased towards it, are bigoted against
particular
| groups, or simply have a number of gaps in your history.  You aparently
know
| a lot, but you also sound like you're missing a lot - especially recent
| history in that region.
|
|
|
|