Timbuktu
Friday November 10, 2006 - 9:32PM EDT
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061110/sc_nm/mali_manuscripts_dcI have come to lament the lack in my education of African history. A few years back I saw part of a documentary presentation on an ancient civilization of Zimbabwe. It made me think about how many other things I didn't learn about Africa other than slaves came from there and the north was conquered by the Moors. I think the lack of education of their ancient history and standing as groups of people who developed civilizations as learned and advanced as anything from Europe, the Americas and Asia contributes to a servile opinion of the people there. I can't help to think were the world would be if European colonists hadn't thought the peoples of Africa to be only slightly better than apes, savages. Being someone who has grown up in America and been taught a mainly Western centric view of history, the chances that I did get to study others history I always wanted more. Specifically in relation to the whole world. I wanted to know while colonists were settling America what were the Chinese doing or Indians. I think though that I probably got more education in other histories beyond western culture than the average student but when I think about it now, it still wasn't enough.
I was watching a documentary on Mayan civilization last night. Certain aspects of their knowledge of astronomy we have only just caught up to in the last 200 years, while they had essentially mastered it centuries before us. It is kind of ridiculous that we can't figure out how or why the people that came before us did things. Makes me wonder whether our current civilization will be lost to the next. Probably not but it is not completely out of the question.