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This is a really odd (bad?) framing. I've never heard of someone who is impressed by Ancient Greek science/knowledge/ability talk down about Babylonian/Egyption

This is a really odd (bad?) framing. I've never heard of someone who is impressed by Ancient Greek science/knowledge/ability talk down about Babylonian/Egyption. Most histories I read talk about how many of these are connected and were successive. Can you cite some "pro western supremaciests" you refer to? It honestly sounds like you are just making stuff up to try to demonize other people.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jvanderbot 4y ago
I've heard this before. TBF, there is a lot of idealistic portrayals of Greek society and philosophers in western media, and Egypt and Persian peoples are usually the bad guys. Whether you believe that is a deep set prejudice and active discrimination campaign or a natural tendency re the history of one's continent is up to you.
- kardianos 4y ago
  > I've heard this before. TBF, there is a lot of idealistic portrayals of Greek society and philosophers in western media, and Egypt and Persian peoples are usually the bad guys. Sometimes nations (Greek, Roman, Persian, etc...) killed and pillaged and from the perspective of someone writing what is now histories, yes, those people doing the killing would be termed "bad guys". > Whether you believe that is a deep set prejudice and active discrimination campaign or a natural tendency re the history of one's continent is up to you. You can actually measure sentiment to some degree. It sounds like you are trying to mind read. Don't do that.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Pre-Islamic Persia barely appears at all in Western media outside of stories about Alexander the Great, the 300 narrative, some random Biblical stuff where Cyrus the Great does a cameo, and I guess the Prince of Persia video games. The only consistent negative portrayal seems to be around the 300, which while a-historic in its telling is just kind of a lazy trope.
  - readthenotes1 4y ago
    That is a late 20th century phenomenon. If you go back into the 1800s and earlier, it was pretty common for a college kids to spend a lot of time learning to translate ancient Greek texts. 2 interesting and good reads are the cyropedia and the anabasis, both by xenophon, and neither portraying the Persians in a negative light.
  - pm90 4y ago
    > Pre-Islamic Persia barely appears at all in Western media Wait, you’re talking about Hollywood/ PostWW2 Western media, right? Because if we look back at how Western historians generally framed the events of the eighteenth century onwards, its almost always been of eastern and oriental cultures as being savages and it was the “White Mans Burden” to bring them the light of civilization.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      I was responding to a comment about Western media. Which is a 20th century affair. I also think 18th and 19th century we working from a much more limited set of historical information. Persepolis was first excavated in the 1930s. Old Persian Cuneiform wasn't fully deciphered until around 1850 and was the basis for decipherment of other languages using cuneiform. It wasn't until then tat any primary historical texts could even be studied. Whereas Greek never disappeared and ancient greek was studied from the classical era onwards. A lot of what we knew about old Persia prior to the 1850s came from people like Xenophon who had a particular ax to grind in contemporary (to him) Greece and used Cyruus and Persia as stand in for ideas he wanted to compare and contrast with Athens and Sparta.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  With no way to edit my comment to include the corrections below, I'll just state that my opinion has softened.
mtalantikite 4y ago
It seems to be pretty rampant within alt-right corners [1]. But yes, of course they're interconnected for anyone that spends time reading and thinking about it. [1] https://www.vox.com/2019/11/6/20919221/alt-right-history-greece-rome-donna-zuckerberg https://www.vox.com/2019/11/6/20919221/alt-right-history-gre...
- kardianos 4y ago
  Uh, this article is someone on "the left" talking about why "the right" thinks it is important to study history. In this case, cites that "the right" is concerned with how civilizations fail, such as the Roman Empire. This doesn't have anything to do with western supremacists, and it very much isn't someone on "the right" talking about themselves. I'm totally cool with reading history and trying to learn from it.
  - pm90 4y ago
    From the article: > The men who consume this stuff — and yes, it’s almost exclusively men — tend to believe two things: that ancient Greek and Roman culture are the basis of Western civilization and that these cultures are the exclusive achievements of white men. > But the idea isn’t merely to celebrate these ancient cultures. The goal is to turn a phrase like “Western civilization” into code for “white culture” and to cement a narrative about history that glorifies patriarchy and undercuts cultural progressivism. Your framing of the article is wildly incorrect. It makes it pretty clear that White Supremacists aren’t concerned about history in itself, but in a framing that glorifies white men. Presumably its analogous to how neo nazis revere Hitler and the Nazi party. The goal in each case is a yearning for “better times in the past” by emulating the past days of “glory”.
    - zmgsabst 4y ago
      That’s a description given by their political rivals — and a strawman. It also doesn’t support the original claim: that people talk down about Babylon and Egypt, a claim that never appears in the article. Celebrating Greece and Rome as European achievements doesn’t denigrate people from other areas. Nor does acknowledging how their philosophy filtered into European and later American thought. The paragraph you cited sounds like a bad faith “hit piece” unrelated to the claims that are being discussed regarding Babylon and Egypt.
schuyler2d 4y ago
There are so many examples it's maybe hard to know where to begin -- after all it happened for at least 1-5 centuries in modern/pre-modern history, and before then the Greeks and then the Romans, e.g. did it themselves. There are whole sub-fields of history of science about this process. Ask yourself why names like Al Kindi and Kandiaronk are unfamiliar or unlikely to be familiar to you -- or Western statecraft begins at Plato or Weber rather than its grounding in Chinese statecraft brought over mostly by Leibniz. Which Arab scientists inspired Kepler and his predecessors and why are you unlikely to have learned that history -- even though it's been known for over a century. If you're genuinely interested here are maybe some places to start: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0948GPBBH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0948GPBBH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... (Dawn of Everything by Graeber) https://historyofphilosophy.net/series/islamic-world https://historyofphilosophy.net/series/islamic-world https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XXY491X/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XXY491X/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... (Orientalism by Said) edit: here's a popular article detailing an example of how concerted and conscious this process is and then 'lost to history' due to the layers of our educational environment: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classical-sculpture https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-wh...
- pythagowannabe 4y ago
  I know invoking astrology is a good way to discredit oneself, but that particular historic perspective attributes the origin of proto-scientific knowledge to the lost races from before the last cataclysm. This is generalizing a lot on my part, but trying to reveal the identity of Hermes Trismagestis will take you on a tour of the ancient world that crosses continents in ways you would never imagine. This is all to say that the Babylonians and Egyptians were extremely revered and cited this entire time for their scientific knowledge TO THIS DAY (take a look at our nation's symbolism).
  - schuyler2d 4y ago
    How we view astrology is a good example of how our racial/ethnic imaginations and imagined 'heritage' distort the record. For people like Newton and Copernicus their obsessions with alchemy and astrology are sidelined/excused/footnotes that are charming as we offset it against their scientific contributions, while Arabic, Egyptian, Babylonian and other sources are dismissed because they "were only doing it for astrology" and couldn't have known/understood the 'real' science/scientific value of their work.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jvanderbot 4y ago

I've heard this before. TBF, there is a lot of idealistic portrayals of Greek society and philosophers in western media, and Egypt and Persian peoples are usually the bad guys. Whether you believe that is a deep set prejudice and active discrimination campaign or a natural tendency re the history of one's continent is up to you.

kardianos 4y ago
> I've heard this before. TBF, there is a lot of idealistic portrayals of Greek society and philosophers in western media, and Egypt and Persian peoples are usually the bad guys. Sometimes nations (Greek, Roman, Persian, etc...) killed and pillaged and from the perspective of someone writing what is now histories, yes, those people doing the killing would be termed "bad guys". > Whether you believe that is a deep set prejudice and active discrimination campaign or a natural tendency re the history of one's continent is up to you. You can actually measure sentiment to some degree. It sounds like you are trying to mind read. Don't do that.
ch4s3 4y ago
Pre-Islamic Persia barely appears at all in Western media outside of stories about Alexander the Great, the 300 narrative, some random Biblical stuff where Cyrus the Great does a cameo, and I guess the Prince of Persia video games. The only consistent negative portrayal seems to be around the 300, which while a-historic in its telling is just kind of a lazy trope.
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  That is a late 20th century phenomenon. If you go back into the 1800s and earlier, it was pretty common for a college kids to spend a lot of time learning to translate ancient Greek texts. 2 interesting and good reads are the cyropedia and the anabasis, both by xenophon, and neither portraying the Persians in a negative light.
- pm90 4y ago
  > Pre-Islamic Persia barely appears at all in Western media Wait, you’re talking about Hollywood/ PostWW2 Western media, right? Because if we look back at how Western historians generally framed the events of the eighteenth century onwards, its almost always been of eastern and oriental cultures as being savages and it was the “White Mans Burden” to bring them the light of civilization.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    I was responding to a comment about Western media. Which is a 20th century affair. I also think 18th and 19th century we working from a much more limited set of historical information. Persepolis was first excavated in the 1930s. Old Persian Cuneiform wasn't fully deciphered until around 1850 and was the basis for decipherment of other languages using cuneiform. It wasn't until then tat any primary historical texts could even be studied. Whereas Greek never disappeared and ancient greek was studied from the classical era onwards. A lot of what we knew about old Persia prior to the 1850s came from people like Xenophon who had a particular ax to grind in contemporary (to him) Greece and used Cyruus and Persia as stand in for ideas he wanted to compare and contrast with Athens and Sparta.
jvanderbot 4y ago
With no way to edit my comment to include the corrections below, I'll just state that my opinion has softened.

mtalantikite 4y ago

It seems to be pretty rampant within alt-right corners [1]. But yes, of course they're interconnected for anyone that spends time reading and thinking about it. [1] https://www.vox.com/2019/11/6/20919221/alt-right-history-greece-rome-donna-zuckerberg https://www.vox.com/2019/11/6/20919221/alt-right-history-gre...

kardianos 4y ago
Uh, this article is someone on "the left" talking about why "the right" thinks it is important to study history. In this case, cites that "the right" is concerned with how civilizations fail, such as the Roman Empire. This doesn't have anything to do with western supremacists, and it very much isn't someone on "the right" talking about themselves. I'm totally cool with reading history and trying to learn from it.
- pm90 4y ago
  From the article: > The men who consume this stuff — and yes, it’s almost exclusively men — tend to believe two things: that ancient Greek and Roman culture are the basis of Western civilization and that these cultures are the exclusive achievements of white men. > But the idea isn’t merely to celebrate these ancient cultures. The goal is to turn a phrase like “Western civilization” into code for “white culture” and to cement a narrative about history that glorifies patriarchy and undercuts cultural progressivism. Your framing of the article is wildly incorrect. It makes it pretty clear that White Supremacists aren’t concerned about history in itself, but in a framing that glorifies white men. Presumably its analogous to how neo nazis revere Hitler and the Nazi party. The goal in each case is a yearning for “better times in the past” by emulating the past days of “glory”.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    That’s a description given by their political rivals — and a strawman. It also doesn’t support the original claim: that people talk down about Babylon and Egypt, a claim that never appears in the article. Celebrating Greece and Rome as European achievements doesn’t denigrate people from other areas. Nor does acknowledging how their philosophy filtered into European and later American thought. The paragraph you cited sounds like a bad faith “hit piece” unrelated to the claims that are being discussed regarding Babylon and Egypt.

schuyler2d 4y ago

There are so many examples it's maybe hard to know where to begin -- after all it happened for at least 1-5 centuries in modern/pre-modern history, and before then the Greeks and then the Romans, e.g. did it themselves. There are whole sub-fields of history of science about this process. Ask yourself why names like Al Kindi and Kandiaronk are unfamiliar or unlikely to be familiar to you -- or Western statecraft begins at Plato or Weber rather than its grounding in Chinese statecraft brought over mostly by Leibniz. Which Arab scientists inspired Kepler and his predecessors and why are you unlikely to have learned that history -- even though it's been known for over a century. If you're genuinely interested here are maybe some places to start: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0948GPBBH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0948GPBBH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... (Dawn of Everything by Graeber) https://historyofphilosophy.net/series/islamic-world https://historyofphilosophy.net/series/islamic-world https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XXY491X/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XXY491X/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... (Orientalism by Said) edit: here's a popular article detailing an example of how concerted and conscious this process is and then 'lost to history' due to the layers of our educational environment: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classical-sculpture https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-wh...

pythagowannabe 4y ago
I know invoking astrology is a good way to discredit oneself, but that particular historic perspective attributes the origin of proto-scientific knowledge to the lost races from before the last cataclysm. This is generalizing a lot on my part, but trying to reveal the identity of Hermes Trismagestis will take you on a tour of the ancient world that crosses continents in ways you would never imagine. This is all to say that the Babylonians and Egyptians were extremely revered and cited this entire time for their scientific knowledge TO THIS DAY (take a look at our nation's symbolism).
- schuyler2d 4y ago
  How we view astrology is a good example of how our racial/ethnic imaginations and imagined 'heritage' distort the record. For people like Newton and Copernicus their obsessions with alchemy and astrology are sidelined/excused/footnotes that are charming as we offset it against their scientific contributions, while Arabic, Egyptian, Babylonian and other sources are dismissed because they "were only doing it for astrology" and couldn't have known/understood the 'real' science/scientific value of their work.