History says that all of man’s early accomplishments either happened deep in caves, like the Cro-Magnon paintings, or out on a desert which hasn’t been used since. Archeologists just found a temple built in Turkey thousands of years before the pyramids and have declared that all later temples came from That one, instead of it all coming from the pyramids.
Like the pyramids, this temple is sitting out there in the open where nothing has been going on. They had the same trouble discovering the Toltecs. The Toltec ruins were in Mexico City and had been built over, so they didn’t look in that area. Fortunately some of the ruins were still showing, in fact people in Mexico City had seen them for years, but the Experts were busy scouring the desert.
And on it goes. Under the giant old church at Uppsala is the old huge Odinist shrine. Nobody has seen it, because it is under a church. Again, the whole thing is idiotic if you put the question in plain English: Did EVERYTHING prehistoric happen in caves or in today’s wastelands?
As a matter of fact, that is what ancient history SAYS happened. No one looks at WHY this information was produced.
If Herodotus had not written, we would not know that six of the seven wonders of the ancient world ever existed, since they were in places where there is activity now, so historians would never have looked.
I love documentaries,, but the second I see one is about the Pyramids, I switch it off. I am finding that other people do, too. I am tired of seeing the same people looking in arid areas and caves and jungles for the first things. It was generally assumed that, since every big structure was invented at the site of those Pyramids so conveniently sitting in a desert right by the Holy Land, that the Stonehenge Culture began there, too.
Stonehenge Culture ruins have been found from Britain down into islands off the Middle East. It was absolutely assumed, without argument, that the first ones were built right by the Middle East. Carbon dating established the exact opposite. Diffusion was North to South, which was promptly forgotten because it didn’t FIT.
No historian EVER talks about the simple fact that all ancient history is assumed to have happened in caves, deserts and jungles. If they ever thought of that, history would make allowance for this, but it doesn’t. It would be an interesting discussion if we talked about what we HAVEN’T discovered because there are thriving societies sitting on and wiping out the old ruins.
But that would spoil the whole profession. Every philosophy from Marx to respectable conservatism has been developed for two centuries on the basis of the Middle East being the origin of history. More than once I have got Christian ire by saying ANYTHING didn’t happen in today’s Israel. Mentioning where Mount Ararat, for example, really is will get the subject changed quickly.
For sixteen centuries scholars poured into Palestine to dig for relics. Many said that Hebrew was the Perfect Human Language. Then they got secular.
By some incredible coincidence, the exact place where the University Scholars had already been digging just happened to be right in between the place that the new secular scholars declared was the Birth Place of All Civilization! Wow. SURPRISE!
Scholars cited in Palestine found out that just to the east, Mesopotamia, and to the west, Egypt, were Origins of All Things. Ain’t it great when it’s just next door?
Back there was a series of findings of human remains, again in the desert, always in the desert, each one was declared to be “where mankind originated.” A top anthropologist who lived in Kenya dug in Kenya and found even earlier skeletons. Again the media all reported he had found the “earliest men.” They actually BELIEVED the earliest men happened to be where he was digging.
Of course they believed that. That is the basis of all ancient history today.
#1 by backbaygrouch4 on 03/13/2010 - 7:59 am
History is a lie agreed upon. – Napoleon Bonaparte
History is bunk. – Henry Ford
History is propaganda, formulated by fools who do not have a clue and polemicists who have no scruples. It is not a science. It is a subdivision of the art of rhetoric.
#2 by shari on 03/13/2010 - 11:42 am
Now, movies like Inglorious Basterds help set the record straight. I’m sure The Blind Side will be memorable too.
#3 by Simmons on 03/13/2010 - 12:01 pm
It’s back to the “Basics”, “why is this information produced?” Because these endeavors end up being mini-cultlike industries where its priest figures rake in an easy living BSing kids and writing books in the hope some political shaman picks them from obscurity and boosts them to some Talmudic Times bestseller list (think Jared Diamond of headhunter fame)
But like all cults they start with a grain of truth and end up as a bloated joke.
What does it take to destroy a cult, QUESTIONS asked. All the all knowing cults fall before the question(s).
But instead we get Limbaughs to skirt the issue and inflate the worth of the left cults, but he like even our Semis play the game and refuse to ask these poor cult kids any questions.
#4 by BGLass on 03/13/2010 - 12:10 pm
Hmm. History is both real and rhetoric. A fight for “truth,” for cultural control and hegemony, and to build on that truth in PRODUCING reality –since words are both descriptive and productive of realities— but at the same time, Something always did happen. Right now, people see new truths emerging across multi-platforms, since ’89, maybe, just shifts in various institutions and disciplines, and they don’t trust this. Are they being lured out? Have ptb become more visible–because they are gaining power? Losing power? Things feel at a strange standstill in the suburbs.
#5 by Wolf on 03/13/2010 - 4:46 pm
I don’t really have anything to add, but I wanted to mention the past few days of posts have been really interesting and really good. Thanks!