posted 10 March 2005 06:48 PM            

RACISM, HISTORY AND LIES © 2000 Max Dashu

Some doctrines of racial supremacy as classically taught
in Euro/American institutions, textbooks and media:

PHYSICAL CALIBRATION DOCTRINE: In which white anthropologists treat people as racial specimens, measuring "cephalic indices" and attempting to prove superiority of the "white" brain. Ugly racist terminology: "prognathism," "platyrhiny," "steatopygous," "sub-Egyptian." Mug-shot lineups of "the Veddan female," "Arapaho male, "Negroid type," "Mongoloid specimen" chacterize this approach. Out of favor in the mid-20th-century, it has enjoyed a revisionist comeback with sociobiology and works claiming racial differentials in intelligence, such as "The Bell Curve."

TECHOLOGICAL CALIBRATION DOCTRINE: Insists on forcing archaeological finds as well as living cultures into a grid of "development" based on the use of certain tools, materials and techniques valued by "Western" scholars. Example: "They were a stone age civilization who never discovered the wheel!" Forces cultures into a progressional paradigm: Old and New Stone Ages, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Revolution, Space Age. This classification ignores the complexity of culture, and the fact that metallurgic technology and military might are not the ultimate measure of advanced culture.

STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT DOCTRINE: The assumption that "primitive" cultures represent lower "stages" in historical evolution, and have yet to attain advanced forms of culture. One English scholar referred to "the child-races of Africa." Usually, social hierarchy, militarization and industrialization are taken as measures of "advanced" civilizations. In the 19th century, scholars openly used the terms "savage," "barbarian," "civilized." Though these offensive words have (mostly) been dropped, the underlying assumptions are still quite influential.

SPREAD OF CIVILIZATION DOCTRINE: Credits all achievements to conquering empires, assuming their superiority in science, technology, and government. Adherents are usually incapable of perceiving advanced earth-friendly systems of land management, agronomy, medicine, collective social welfare networks, healing, astronomical knowledge, or profound philosophical traditions of peoples considered "primitive" by dominant "Western" standards.

PASSING OF THE TORCH DOCTRINE: Claims a chain of cultural transmission from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Greece to Rome to western Europe to the USA, leaving vast gaps where the history of the rest of the world should be. (The discussion never returns to Egypt or Iraq to consider what happened there after the fall of their ancient empires.) Most of the planet's cultures are discussed only in relation to the European conquest, if mentioned at all. As a result, few people have any idea of the history of Sumatra, Honduras, Niger, Ecuador, Mozambique, Ohio, Hokkaido, Samoa, or even European countries such as Lithuania or Bosnia.

IF IT WAS GREAT, IT MUST HAVE BEEN WHITE: If advanced science, art, or architecture is found in Africa or South America, then Phoenecians, Greeks, Celts, Vikings (or, in the extreme case, space aliens) must be invoked to explain their presence. (Here, whiteness often functions as a relative concept, as "lighter than.") This bias gives rise to a pronounced tendency to date American or African cultures later than warranted, and as a result dating is constantly having to be revised further back into the past as evidence of greater antiquity piles up.

Corollary: IF IT WAS WHITE, IT MUST HAVE BEEN GREAT. Thus, the conqueror Charlemagne was a great man, in spite of his genocidal campaign against the Saxons, but the Asian conquerors Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan were simply evil. Stereotypes of head-hunters picture Africans (in the absence of any evidence for the practice) but never Celtic head-hunters in France and Britain -- much less Lord Kitchener making off with the Mahdi's skull in Sudan, or U.S. settlers taking scalps and body parts of Indian people. This doctrine also underlies the common assumption that European conquest must have improved life for subject peoples.

A 19th century French engraving idealizes the conquest of Algeria as a showering of the benefits of superior civilization on abject, genuflecting North Africans.

IF IT WAS NOT WHITE, AND ITS GREATNESS IS UNDENIABLE, THEN IT MUST BE DEPRECATED IN SOME WAY: Example:The Epic of Man, published in the '60s by Time/Life Books, says of the advanced civilization of ancient Pakistan: "It is known that a static and sterile quality pervaded Indus society." It used to be the academic fashion to call ancient Egypt a "moribund" civilization which "stifled creativity." Similar writings dismissed the "Incas" (Quechua) as "totalitarian," or the Chinese as "isolated" and "resistant to change."

The AFRICAN GAP DOCTRINE: After examining the first humans hundreds of thousands of years ago, this historical approach completely skips over most of the African archaeological record. It discusses ancient Egypt but ascribes its civilization to "the Middle East," denying its African identity and archaeological connections with Saharan and southern Nilotic civilizations. Saharan civilization, Ile-Ife or Mwanamutapa are not discussed at all. Africa is simply dropped from historical consideration until the era of European slaving and colonization.

The BERING STRAIT DOCTRINE insists that all indigenous American peoples came across a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, filtering down through Central America into South America. Problem: numerous archaeological sites in the Americas predate any possible Bering Strait migration by many thousands of years. Access from Alaska to the rest of North America was blocked for millennia by two great ice sheets that covered Canada. An narrow opening that might have allowed passage appeared much too late (about 13,500 years ago) to explain the growing evidence that people were living in both North and South America much earlier than these "first" migrations.

By 1997-98, the tide of opinion began to turn: several scientific conclaves declared that a majority of attending scholars rejected the Bering Strait theory as a full explanation of how the Americas were peopled.The long-doctrinal hypothesis of Clovis hunters as the first immigrants is crumbling before the new dating, as hundreds of pre-Clovis sites pile up: Cactus Hill, Virginia (13,500 BP); Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania (14,000 - 17,000 Before Present); Monte Verde (12,500 BP); Pedra-Furada, Brazil (15,000 BP, and possibly as old as 32,000 BP).

Bering Strait diehards discount the oral histories of indigenous Americans, such as Hopi accounts of migrations across "stepping-stones" in the Pacific. In spite of the huge diversity among the American peoples and differences between most Americans and east Asians, all are declared to be of "Mongoloid racial origin." After the initial press stampede declaring "Kennewick Man" to be "white," study of the genetic evidence shows something entirely different. Instead, it appears that there have been several waves of migration: from central China, from the ancient Jomon culture of Japan, from south Asia or the Pacific islands. And "Luzia," an 11,500-year-old female skeleton in Brazil "appeared to be more Negroid in its cranial features than Mongoloid," in the stodgy anthropological terminology of the New York Times (Nov 9, 1999). But there is also a uniquely North American X-haploid group of mitochondrial DNA, which could uphold American Indian traditions of origins in North America.

THE POWER OF NAMING

STEREOTYPING entire peoples as mad, uncontrollable threats: "Wild Indians," "Yellow Hordes" or "the Yellow Peril." As inferior nonhumans: "primitives," "savages," "gooks," "niggers" -- this last term used not only against African-Americans, but also by English colonizers of Egypt and India. Even the word "natives," which originally meant simply the people born in a country and by extension the aboriginal inhabitants, took on heavy racist coloration as an inferior Other.

POLARIZATION: "Scientific thought" vs. "primitive belief"; "undeveloped" vs "civilized"; or "the world's great religions" vs. "tribal superstitions," "cults," "idolatry" or "devil-worship." Depending on where it was created, a sculpture could either be a "masterpiece of religious art" or an "idol," "fetish," or "devil." Few people realize that "Western" scientists did not match the accuracy of ancient Maya calculations of the length of the solar year until the mid-20th century.

Indians who resist colonization and land theft are commonly portrayed as evil in popular media, which applies negative labels such as "Renegades."

RENAMING: Dutch colonists called the Khoi-khoi people "Hottentots" (stutterers). Russians called the northwest Siberian Nentsy "Samoyed" (cannibals). These are blatant examples, but many nationalities are still called by unflattering names given by their enemies: "Sioux" (Lakota); "Miao" (Hmong); "Lapps" (Saami); "Basques" (Euskadi); "Eskimos" (Inuit). European names have replaced the originals in many places: Nigeria, Australia, New Caledonia, New Britain, etc. (But "Rhodesia" bit the dust.)

DEGRADATION OF MEANINGS: "Mumbo jumbo" has become a cliché signifying meaningless superstitions, but it comes from a Mandinke word -- mama dyambo -- for a ritual staff bearing the image of a female ancestor. (Look it up in any good dictionary.) "Fetish" now connotes an obsessive sexual fixation, but originated as a Portuguese interpretation of sacred West African images as "sorcery" (feitição). The holy city of Islam is often appropriated in phrases like "a Mecca for shoppers."

DOUBLE-THINK: Conquest becomes "unification," "pacification,""opening up," and conquered regions are dubbed "protectorates." The convention is to use Europe as the standard, writing texts from the viewpoint of the conquerors / colonizers. Thus, a Rajasthani rebellion against English rule was termed the "Indian Mutiny." A peculiarity of this thinking is the tendency to refer to times of bloody invasions and enslavement with respectful affection, as in "The Golden Age of Greece" and "The Glory That Was Rome," or "How the West Was Won." British subjugation of southern Nigeria is recast as The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

A contributor to Men Become Civilized, edited by Trevor Cairns explains it all to children:

"When the king of one city conquered others, he would have to make sure that all the people in all the cities knew what to do. He would have to see that they all had rules to follow, so that they would live peacefully together."

Double-think finds ways to recast genocide as regrettable but necessary, due to failings of the people being killed, who are somehow unable to "adapt." Distancing the agent is key here, obscuring the violence with the idea that some kind of natural process is at work: "vanishing races," "by that time the Indians had disappeared."

THE POWER OF IMAGES

Hollywood tomtoms beat as fake Indians jump up and down, uttering brainless cries and grunts. There's the "squaw" complex in literature and cinema, the faithful Indian sidekick, and Robinson Crusoe's "Man Friday." John Wayne as the Western movie hero, saying: "There's humans and then there's Comanches." Or in real life, justifying settler theft of Indian countries: "There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."

This picture appeared in an ad for insurance. Advertising is an important transmitter of historical misrepresentation. It draws on colonial mythologies such as the notion that the Dutch "bought" Manhattan for the equivalent of $24 in trade goods --in spite of the fact that the Indians did not think of land as something that could be sold. The role of violence (including massacres after which Staten Island settlers played football with Wappinger heads) is obliterated.

Tarzan goes up against witch doctors and eye-rolling African chiefs. The Caribbean shown as full of fearful, superstitious natives and zombies, Arabs who have nothing to do all day but loll around in harems, or cheat the white hero. Seductive Suzie Wongs, thieving Mexicans, and shiftless and sexually insatiable African-Americans. Movies depicting the Chinese as obsequious and deceitful, Arabs as treacherous, Africans as ignorant and barbaric.

COUNTERPOINT

The Mande were farming millet and other crops in West Africa in 6500-5000 BCE.

Temples in Peru and India are much older than the Parthenon.

People in Mississippi, Illinois and Mexico traded with each other and exchanged ideas and symbols, as the the sea-faring Ecuadorians did with Costa Rica and western Mexico.

A small-statured Black people built the oldest civilization in southeast Asia, leaving megalithic temples and statuary in south India, Cambodia, Sumatra and other Indonesian islands.

Archaeology shows that the formative influences on ancient Egypt came from Sudan and the Sahara, not the "Middle East."

The oldest megalithic calendar in the world has recently been discovered in the Egyptian Sahara, dating back to 7000 years ago. European megaliths (which spread from the south) may have an African origin.

Polynesian mariners had begun navigating by the stars and settling the vast ocean expanses of the Pacific islands before the time of Moses.

WHAT IS DEFINED AS HISTORY?

In the last half century the boundaries of "acceptable" history have been expanded by a multidisciplinary approach, including sources previously dismissed: orature (oral tradition), linguistics, anthropology, social history, art, music and other cultural sources. More recently, the social locations of historians have come under consideration as a factor shaping their perspectives, along with a sense that there is no absolutely "objective" view of history. Past claims of objectivity have biases clearly visible today, notably in siding with European settlers and slavers against non-christian cultures, and the almost total eclipse of female acts and experience from historical accounts.

A reader who might react negatively to a blatant expression of racism often misses perceiving one cloaked in scholarly language, in assumptions, judgements and misinformation most people have not been educated to catch. It does not occur to many people to question a pronounced overemphasis on Europe, the smallest continent (actually, a subcontinent of Asia.) If a chapter or two on African and Asian history is inserted in a textbook, publishers go ahead and call it a world history. Typically, media depictions of history have not caught up with information now available in specialized academic sources, and continue to present the old stereotypes and distortions as fact.

BARBARIANS AT THE GATES

In the early '90s a hue and cry was raised in the national media against "multiculturalism." It threatened the very foundations of Western Civilization, explained an outpouring of magazine articles and newspaper columns which shed much heat but little light. A Newsweek cover blared: "THOUGHT POLICE: There's a 'Politically Correct' Way to Talk About Race, Sex and Ideas. Is This the New Enlightenment -- Or the New McCarthyism?" As if this wasn't heavy-handed enough, it adds a warning, "Watch What You Say." (December 24, 1990)

"In U.S. classrooms, battles are flaring over values that are almost a reverse image of the American mainstream. As a result, a new intolerance is on the rise." William A. Henry III, "Upside Down in the Groves of Academe", Time Magazine, April 1, 1991

"'It used to be thought that ideas transcend race, gender and class, that there are such things as truth, reason, morality and artistic excellence, which can be understood and aspired to by everyone, of whatever race, gender or class.' Now we have democracy in the syllabus, affirmative action in the classroom. 'No one believes in greatness.' Bate says mournfully. 'That's gone.'" Op-Ed, New York Times Magazine, by Gertrude Himmelfarb, June 5, 1991

"If there is insufficient authentic African culture to meet the demands of self-esteem, then culture must be borrowed from ancient Egypt. No black pharaohs? A few must be invented. Not enough first-rate women poets? Let second-raters be taught instead." James Kilpatrick, "Poisoning the Groves of Academe," San Francisco Chronicle, April 15, 1991

posted 10 March 2005 07:01 PM            

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Originally posted by rasol:
Nicely written article.

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posted 11 March 2005 01:05 PM            

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Originally posted by Horemheb:
Every ounce of modern civilization now in third world nations was brought there by the British Empire of american corporations. Thats not racism it is simply a fact. When the global frontier opened around 1500 Europe began to spread modernism around the globe. It is a process that is reaching maturity today and is accepted as gospel by historians everywhere.

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I never said it wasn't a fact! The British Empire was just that, an empire. They colonized countries around the world. Yes, in the end they may have helped these nations by introducing more advanced technology, but do you really think that was their purpose was to help the natives?

No, their purpose was to help themselves! What you don't understand is that many of the native economies of these colonized countries suffered because of the colonization, and the only way the natives could succeed was by depending on their colonizers.

But this is not the purpose of this thread. The sole purpose of this thread is to educate peoples, especially whites like yourself, about the major biases of so-called Western History. This topic goes out especially to you "Horemheb," since you yourself seem to be caught up in all the nonsense that this article exposes.

You actually claimed that there was no such thing as Eurocentrism and that it was made up by "black radicals," when the facts are that almost all groups of people are ethnocentric regardless of race or creed. Many peoples have seen themselves as the center of the world, but Europeans of all people are guilty of this, since recently in history they gained world power and pre-eminence. "Black-radicals" of the 20th century U.S. weren't the first ones to realize this. Black peoples everywhere in the Americas and in Africa, aboriginal Australians and it's not just black people but peoples in the Middle-East, Central Asia, South Asia especially India, China, basically all people of color!! And that's a lot of people. Even white Westerners have recently become aware of their racial and cultural bias.

In actuality it's really silly to deny Eurocentrism yet acknowledge the existence of racism! That's because racism and white supremacy is a direct product of Eurocentrism. To deny Eurocentrism but acknowledge racism, is like denying that a child has ever had parents.

posted 11 March 2005 04:48 PM            

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Originally posted by Horemheb:
Djehuti, Some very good writing, I must say. I think you are a very idealistic man, and that is not all bad. I'm leaving for the weekend and I want to continue this discussion on Monday. Let me leave you with this thought:
*** when in the history of the human race has the stronger power, anywher on the globe, not tried to dominate the weaker?
the left in the west has a major philosophical flaw and it goes to the heart of your concerns.....can man be perfected from an ethical standpoint. History tells us that it cannot. I suggest reading 'The Prince' by Machavelli ... that is the way humanity has always worked and always will.
Its not pretty but its true.

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What you say is true!

Throughout human history, people regardless of race have sought power and domination, and unfortunately this was attained by subjegation and oppression other peoples. The problem is that some Afrocentrics who claim that such attitudes are solely those of Europeans, when in fact, many peoples throughout the world are guilty of it even some Africans!

posted 11 March 2005 08:46 PM            

Interesting observations but do you think history should have a moral dimension. If not, then do you make a distinction between killing a human being and killing a mosquito? Or do you think that seizing a piece of land to plant crops that is already used by birds and wild goats is no different than doing the same to humans?

If you think that history has a moral dimension then how would you have liked to have been one of the millions slaughtered and captured by the West to make North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya, Algeria, etc. to make those lands habitable for "free Westerners"--now awake after a thousand years of slavery?

Finally, if you think history shouldn't have a moral dimension then do you believe that the mistake Germany made during WWII was just to have lost the war? If Germany had won WWII then everything would have been just fine for the Germans and the Holocaust would have only been a minor feature of the war--agree? So do you think that the Holocaust was "just history in motion"? Or Leopold of Belgium's slaughter of 10 million Congolese as "those people were just standing in the way of progress. The Western world just had to have as much rubber as possible for the sake of capitalism and Western econmic growth"?

posted 12 March 2005 06:53 AM            

.....they have attacked other groups physically and psychologically mercilessly for hundreds of years....call it what it is.

While most sit numb and dumb to what the West does to the world enviroment and non-white people, others act.....like the Chinese for example, because they know full well what the West are about. To combat the west u need to know they are the enemy and will respect nothing but power

If u don't Name and Shame the west for what it is u will be doomed to never break those chains of mental slavery they shackle non-whites with to replace the physical domination they had in the past.

posted 12 March 2005 01:03 PM            

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Originally posted by Obenga:
Why are some of u so unwilling to separate the "White West" from the behaviour of other groups

.....they have attacked other groups physically and psychologically mercilessly for hundreds of years....call it what it is.

While most sit numb and dumb to what the West does to the world enviroment and non-white people, others act.....like the Chinese for example, because they know full well what the West are about. To combat the west u need to know they are the enemy and will respect nothing but power

If u don't Name and Shame the west for what it is u will be doomed to never break those chains of mental slavery they shackle non-whites with to replace the physical domination they had in the past.

I know what the West means to people that are Non-White......ask a Native American or do they suffer from poor perception of self and widespread alcoholism as a product of their own culture.....ask some other indigenous peoples what the West did to their culture........and still does on a psychological level.......or do u think all those black men in the USA are in Jail because of the genetics of blackness thats leads them to jail in far greater numbers than any other group?

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good points.

posted 12 March 2005 05:59 PM            

Also this thread is not about the ways of power, but the fact that history has been misinterpreted time and again by the West due to biases.

posted 28 September 2005 07:27 PM            

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Originally posted by Horemheb:
How has history been misinterpreted? Look, Since 1500 Europeans have been the dominant cutural center in the world. They have literally created the modern world we live in today. You cannot spin it anyother way.
We can spend hours talking about all the reasons why it happened the way it did but the fact is, it happened.
This is not a racial matter, its a cultural matter. American Indians lost North America because in a clash between two cultures the stronger culture won....AS THEY ALWAYS DO.
You have turned a historical fact into an obsession.

[This message has been edited by Horemheb (edited 28 September 2005).]

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actually the american indian lost for the same reason Africans were enslaved......

GUN POWDER..........THE MUSKET.....and the mass production thereof.........

even then they were freed from their renewed state of catatonia by the moors (Afrasians) - twice enlightened......with their first universities and even running water....even windows at their homes were brought during the dark ages from afar...not to mention bathing.....(lol)

posted 28 September 2005 07:49 PM            

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Originally posted by AFROCENTRIST32:

actually the american indian lost for the same reason Africans were enslaved......

GUN POWDER..........THE MUSKET.....and the mass production thereof.........

even then they were freed from their renewed state of catatonia by the moors (Afrasians) - twice enlightened......with their first universities and even running water....even windows at their homes were brought during the dark ages from afar...not to mention bathing.....(lol)

[This message has been edited by AFROCENTRIST32 (edited 28 September 2005).]

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"history not only does not have a moral dimension"

For distortionists and eurocentrists......of course not

"Intelligence is understanding the enviorment you live in and dealing with it."

not intelligence is ones ability to think critically and rationally - something many of us don't seem to be able to do.

"Obviously not much of that is going on here. This utopian crap you guys are latching will produce predictible results."

assimilation and degradation of the other cultures of the world at the hand of Europeans is coming to an end - hence the awakening of so many africans to their true past.......

"get an education that results in a more REALISTIC of the world you live it. nobody cares that you are black and have issues with life."

great point..........I'll continue what should have been written next......

Certainly not those openly attack your culture; but more-so those who claim to have your best interests at heart. those who claim to be on your side.... (lol)
The reality is that those of us who know are responsible to relay that information to our youth......even if they don't believe at first.....for it is imperative that we at the very least spark an interest in investigating some of the claims we make...............

posted 28 September 2005 07:50 PM            

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even then they were freed from their renewed state of catatonia by the moors (Afrasians) - twice enlightened......with their first universities and even running water....even windows at their homes were brought during the dark ages from afar...not to mention bathing.....(lol)

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You can also look at as the demise of Africans and the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Moors only preserved Greco-Roman classics and transported Asiatic technology[irrigation[from Persians],Arabic numerals[really from Hindus],lateen sails[was used in the east before the West].

I am willing to bet that without Moorish intervention that Europeans would have never developed the sea power or developed into the Age of Exploration. Sometimes bringing civlization to people is not always the best. The Moors should have stayed in their own countries and developed them.

Prince Henery the Navigator asked the Moors about where their gold came from,and he told them and showed them exactly where it came from.

Most people don't know that Moors[your heroes] were importing slaves from Timbuktu and other Saharan slave routes. Look up the Trans-Saharan slave route[it did not offically end untill 1950's in Libya]

However, what you are glossing over is the Byzantine Empire. Unlike the Northern-Western Europeans, the Byzantines still had thriving schools and recieved technology and ideas from the east.

posted 28 September 2005 08:27 PM            

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Originally posted by ausar:

You can also look at as the demise of Africans and the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Moors only preserved Greco-Roman classics and transported Asiatic technology[irrigation[from Persians],Arabic numerals[really from Hindus],lateen sails[was used in the east before the West].

I am willing to bet that without Moorish intervention that Europeans would have never developed the sea power or developed into the Age of Exploration. Sometimes bringing civlization to people is not always the best. The Moors should have stayed in their own countries and developed them.

Prince Henery the Navigator asked the Moors about where their gold came from,and he told them and showed them exactly where it came from.

Most people don't know that Moors[your heroes] were importing slaves from Timbuktu and other Saharan slave routes. Look up the Trans-Saharan slave route[it did not offically end untill 1950's in Libya]

However, what you are glossing over is the Byzantine Empire. Unlike the Northern-Western Europeans, the Byzantines still had thriving schools and recieved technology and ideas from the east.

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actually (LOL), the moors are not my heroes for exactly the reasons you mentioned.....I spoke in another thread to the severity of pre-European Arab-chattel slavery to which most of the arabized African moors were subjected. their form of slavery was so severe that infact the africans almost ran into the arms of the europeans (figuratively)...

posted 28 September 2005 08:30 PM            

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Originally posted by AFROCENTRIST32:

actually the american indian lost for the same reason Africans were enslaved......

GUN POWDER..........THE MUSKET.....and the mass production thereof.........

even then they were freed from their renewed state of catatonia by the moors (Afrasians) - twice enlightened......with their first universities and even running water....even windows at their homes were brought during the dark ages from afar...not to mention bathing.....(lol)

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Gun powder and related technology-- guns, bombs, cannons, etc. were invented in East Asia, specifically by the Chinese!!

The Chinese had the technology but during the age of European conquest, unfortunately the Chinese goverment was going through a period of economic instability and they so they didn't have the army. Europeans soon stormed them using their own weapons!

posted 28 September 2005 08:32 PM            

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
Gun powder and related technology-- guns, bombs, cannons, etc. were invented in East Asia, specifically the Chinese!!

The Chinese had the technology but during the age of European conquest, unfortunately the Chinese goverment was going through a period of economic instability and they didn't so they didn't have the army. Europeans soon stormed them using their own weapons!

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posted 28 September 2005 08:38 PM            

Interesting roots of what became the tool of European imperialism...

Gunpowder:

The Chinese knew gunpowder in the 11th century, but didn’t know the right proportions of getting explosions and didn’t achieve the necessary purification of potassium nitrate. The first Chinese book, which details the explosives proportion, was in 1412 by Huo Lung Ching. [1]

Al-Rammah’s book is the first to explain the purification procedure for potassium nitrate and described many recipes for making gunpowder with the correct proportions to achieve explosion. This is necessary for the development of canons. Partington [ 3] says “the collection of recipes was probably taken from different sources at different times in the author’s family and taken down. Such recipes are described as tested.” Al-Razi, Al-Hamdany, and an Arabic-Syriaque manuscript of the 10th century describe potassium nitrate. Ibn Al-Bitar describes it in 1240. The Arab-Syriaque manuscript of the 10th century gives some recipes of gunpowder. It is assumed that these were added in the 13th century.

The Latin book “Liber Ignium” of Marcus Graecus is originally Arabic (translated in Spain) gives many recipes for making gunpowder the last four of which must have been added to the book in 1280 or 1300. “Did Roger Bacon derive his famous cryptic gunpowder in his Epistola of ca. 1260 from the crusader Peter of Maricourt, some other traveler or from a wide range of reading from Arabic and alchemical books”. References [1], [3], and Joseph Needham, doubt the correctness and effectiveness of the recipe of Bacon.

The German scientist Albert Magnus obtained his information from the “Liber Ignium” originally an Arabic book translated in Spain.

Evidence of the use of gunpowder during the crusades in Fustat, in Egypt, 1168 was found in the form of traces of potassium nitrate. Such traces were also found in 1218 during the siege of Dumyat and in the battle of Al-Mansoura in 1249.

Winter mentions, “the Chinese may have discovered saltpeter (gunpowder) or else that discovery may have been transmitted to them by the Muslims whom they had plenty of opportunities of meeting either at home or abroad. Sarton is referring to Arab-Muslim traders to China, as well as Arab inhabitants in China. As early as 880 an estimated 120,000 Muslims, Jews and Persians liven in Canton alone.”

Canons and Rockets:

There are four Arabic manuscripts (Almakhzoun manuscripts; one in Petersburg, two in Paris and one in Istanbul) in 1320 describing the first portable canon with suitable gunpowder. This description is principally the same as for modern guns. Such canons were used in the famous battle of Ain-Galout against the Mongols (1260).

The Mamlouks developed the canons further during the 14th century.

In Spain, Arabs used canons defending Seville (1248), in Granada 1319, in Baza or Albacete 1324, in Huescar and Martos 1325, in Alicante 1331 and in Algeziras 1342-1344. Partington says, “ the history of artillery in Spain is related to that of the Arabs”.

J.R. Partington mentions, “Arabic accounts suggest that the Arabs introduced firearms into Spain, from where they passed to Italy, from there to France, and finally Germany.”

“The Arabs, in any event, appear to have been the first to inherit (and possibly) originate the secret of the rocket, and it was through Arabic writings, rather than the Mongols -- that the Europeans came to know the rocket. The two notable examples of Arabic knowledge of the rocket are the so-called “self-moving and combusting egg” of the Syrian Al-Hassan Al-Rammah (d. 1294 - 1295), details of which may be found in Willey Ley’s popular “Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel” and physician Yusuf ibn Ismail Al-Kutub’s description (1311) of the saltpeter (“they use it to make a fire which rises and moves, thus increasing it in lightness and inflammability”). - Frank H. Winter

Sources: Courtesy of FSTC

First posted here: http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/Forum8/HTML/001869.html

posted 28 September 2005 08:41 PM            

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Gun powder and related technology-- guns, bombs, cannons, etc. were invented in East Asia, specifically the Chinese!!

The Chinese had the technology but during the age of European conquest, unfortunately the Chinese goverment was going through a period of economic instability and they didn't so they didn't have the army. Europeans soon stormed them using their own weapons!

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That's not the only innovation that the Chinese introduced. Don't forget the first moveable type[found in Korea],paper currency,and deep oil drilling. Military innovartions like the striup came from either the nomadic Mongols or Chinese.

Windmills can either from ancient India or Persia[Moors brought this to Europe].

posted 29 September 2005 05:04 PM            

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Originally posted by Horemheb:
They have literally created the modern world we live in today. You cannot spin it anyother way.

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The first 'modern' European nations were in the Iberian peninsula; without Moorish, Arab, Indian, and Chinese knowledge, they would have gone nowehre. Besides civilization can't develop in a vacuum, the nations of the 1500 centuries were blessed by the civilization of the past. Many of these civilizations can be found in Africa.

1. The Western civlization is a very late group of civilization. Ancient Greece shouldn't even be included; they were heavily influenced by West Asia and Africa. Ancient Greece should be a part of the Eastern part of the world; just like Armenia.
2. Germanic peoples of Europe were originally considered barbarians.
3. Without the wheel, there would be no car at all.

West, nanely Germany, Great Britain, Western Europe and the US rose not only, because of the whites but also other races. Whether they were inventors, labourers, or slaves does not matter. Just take a closer look at the list of colour inventors, scholars, etc who have greatly contributed to the Western civilization.

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Originally posted by AFROCENTRIST32
actually the american indian lost for the same reason Africans were enslaved.

GUN POWDER..........THE MUSKET.....and the mass production thereof.........

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