3 ms·

>Why do they feel the need to do this? Because of a history of archeology degrading the people of the region, perhaps, and a desire to apply the same civilizat

by aa-jv 5y ago

>Why do they feel the need to do this? Because of a history of archeology degrading the people of the region, perhaps, and a desire to apply the same civilization-building moral standards to Africa as the rest of the world? A 250 meter long wall, 11 meters tall .. made out of nothing but bricks (no mortar, remember) .. surviving mostly intact after 10 centuries? That is definitely a triumph of engineering, by anyones standards ..

trabant00 5y ago
So you fight one exageration by exagerating in opposite direction? This only gives ammunition to the opposite side.
- jeromegv 5y ago
  Did you do anything to fight the first exaggeration? Or you're just showing up now that it is about Africa?
  - hiptobecubic 5y ago
    I feel like this is the main point people are missing. Literally every time there's a "feature" of anything that isn't already accepted by mainstream audiences, people start trotting out all the millions of reasons that isn't special, but ignore that these reasons aren't unique at all. See basically any technical media created by women for thousands more examples of this. Some woman makes a video about coding or something and people focus on how she doesn't use vim efficiently enough, she doesn't have a good enough mic set up, she is only working on "basic crud apps" etc etc.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
jterrys 5y ago
By virtue of trying to prop up this wall, I think the same "civilization-builiding moral standards" aren't being applied here. More realistically, it's a tinge of Zimbabwean nationalism shrouded in archeological dressing being applied here.
- aa-jv 5y ago
  Well, given that the people of the region were told for decades that their ancestors were too sub-human to have advanced well enough to develop the technology to build a wall out of bricks with no mortar, which subsequently survived centuries .. I would posit that it is not appropriate to label this as anything more than 'cultural relief that the racist view is being removed from their zeitgeist, because: science, bitches.' The Great Zimbabwe site was built by a people who clearly had more understanding of the world of physics during their time than we allowed for in our pro-European narratives, so far. The same is true of many, many other sites around the world, which don't fit the narrative of western academics' world view of themselves and their Eureopean cultures, and which undermine the perspective that prior civilizations were primitive in their approach to technology and application of scientific discoveries. The hubris and arrogance of this field is slowing being peeled away, layer by layer, and replaced with facts which update the context of human history. Its not without some relief that I personally note that this is no longer the exclusive purview of european academics with an agenda ..

by aa-jv 5y ago

trabant00 5y ago

So you fight one exageration by exagerating in opposite direction? This only gives ammunition to the opposite side.

jeromegv 5y ago
Did you do anything to fight the first exaggeration? Or you're just showing up now that it is about Africa?
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  I feel like this is the main point people are missing. Literally every time there's a "feature" of anything that isn't already accepted by mainstream audiences, people start trotting out all the millions of reasons that isn't special, but ignore that these reasons aren't unique at all. See basically any technical media created by women for thousands more examples of this. Some woman makes a video about coding or something and people focus on how she doesn't use vim efficiently enough, she doesn't have a good enough mic set up, she is only working on "basic crud apps" etc etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

jterrys 5y ago

By virtue of trying to prop up this wall, I think the same "civilization-builiding moral standards" aren't being applied here. More realistically, it's a tinge of Zimbabwean nationalism shrouded in archeological dressing being applied here.

aa-jv 5y ago
Well, given that the people of the region were told for decades that their ancestors were too sub-human to have advanced well enough to develop the technology to build a wall out of bricks with no mortar, which subsequently survived centuries .. I would posit that it is not appropriate to label this as anything more than 'cultural relief that the racist view is being removed from their zeitgeist, because: science, bitches.' The Great Zimbabwe site was built by a people who clearly had more understanding of the world of physics during their time than we allowed for in our pro-European narratives, so far. The same is true of many, many other sites around the world, which don't fit the narrative of western academics' world view of themselves and their Eureopean cultures, and which undermine the perspective that prior civilizations were primitive in their approach to technology and application of scientific discoveries. The hubris and arrogance of this field is slowing being peeled away, layer by layer, and replaced with facts which update the context of human history. Its not without some relief that I personally note that this is no longer the exclusive purview of european academics with an agenda ..