Iran's Wolf Wall, Second-Longest in the World, Is Still Shrouded in Mystery
blogs.discovermagazine.com
blogs.discovermagazine.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l
Iranians constructed these deep structures that engineered in a such a way to grow ice in the winter and keep the ice for the entirety of summer. They made a kind of sorbet as a dessert.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faloodeh
Thanks for sharing this! Great read!
BTW, love Faloodeh! Also, not to be confused with Falooda (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falooda).
https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=fir...
There's also these, which are marvels of desert engineering:
[] Started with Charlemagne being crowned as Holy Roman Emperor when the Eastern Empress (Mother?) Irene still lives. Even to the point of friendly relationship between the Roman Emperor on Aachen and Arab Caliph on Baghdad, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid–Carolingian_alliance
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamis 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae
American education teaches a lot about the US but little about the history of specific European countries and in turn EU countries teach little about American history ( IIRC during my education we covered the entirety of the US history in half a year and then went back to more local history )
It's always quite amazing to realize that other countries mostly have just as much of a rich history as your own.
And whats wrong with this ? It shouldn't take multiple years to teach the history of a country who's been around for ~250 years now.
Here in Europe, US is understood to mean United States, the country (declaration of independence and all that jazz). America(s) is a separate concept.
European history doesn't start where the last government was established either, it goes back all the way, regardless of who happened to think it was their country at the time.
The state inherits history.
In the end, all those that learn history are doomed to watch history repeat itself.
But history is a bit fluid in that it's not beholden to specific national borders. And we might study the history of the land the U.S. occupies and colloquially call it U.S. history even though most of it happened before there was a U.S. and may not always follow the current borders.
And I think there is a clear distinction that can reasonably be made if someone is referring to the history of the state or the history of the land and be conscious that they're not always mutually exclusive.
But then, organizing by geology might not make the most sense, either. Then, where does European history end and Asian history begin, or African history? Where does North American history end and Mesoamerican history begin?
Dividing it up by geology makes it easier to categorise.
On topic: Iran is an absolutely stunning country. Second to none with respect to its nature, people and history. What happened there with the Arab conquests (and especially since the Islamic Golden Age), their sad and unsuccessful struggles for independence, is a crying shame. But still one of the proudest, most beautiful regions of the world.
Native American history is tens of thousands of years old and we learn very little at school (in Europe) aside from the stereotypes that the film industry and other cariacatures afford. I think we learned a bit about Columbus in the UK (I assume Spain does a better job)? We never learned about South America at all, save that it was something to do with why we kept looting Spanish ships. Neither did we learn about the Middle East which seems bizarre, given its role in early civilisation.
Europeans are (largely) either descendants of one of the ancient empires or were significantly affected by them through conquest. The native Americans (in both hemispheres) were on the receiving end of European conquest and had their culture decimated or plundered. There's also a lot of very visible (and impressive) Roman, Egyptian and Greek culture lying around to visit, not to mention extensive written histories of all three. While there are similar sites in the Americas, there are fewer and they're often less visible or are quite inaccessible.
To the best of my knowledge, there's a limited written record from the North America prior to the invasion (" discovery") - apart from in Norse sagas chronicling the viking arrival around 1000 AD (and while the sagas are an important source, they're hardly known for their reliability, in part because of the often long gap between events and when the sagas were first written down).
Both south and north American indigenous civilizations were AFAIK largely without a written record.
Admittedly, the 'general' history we did in the first 3 years of secondary school (11-14) we covered mostly western history, but it covered Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, etc. We did some English history (Boudicca, Alfred, is all I can remember now).
In the optional GCSE History I did (14-16) we did little English history as far as I remember and covered inter-war Germany + rise of Hitler, Vietnam war, Chinese Communist Revolution, formation of Israel, Cuban Missile Crisis and probably some more I've now forgotten.
EDIT: I actually now remember we did cover Cromwell + English Civil war as well as William the Orange and the Suez crisis, probably at least one of those in GCSE. Slightly modified to reflect this.
A lot of those do directly impact the UK, although when we covered China, it was still fairly weak compared to its present position in the world.
Weirdly we learnt almost nothing about the British Empire, which I think is sad because some people have a rose-tinted view of it. You can't begin to form an actual opinion until you know the history, the good and the bad etc.
I've learnt a lot of my English history from Bernard Cornwell historical fiction books.
Thoroughly recommended, as you say I was fairly ignorant to most all the history of this region
The British destroyed a lot of their advanced ancient technology, which is probably why it's not taught as much.
The walls of Benin were 4 times longer than the wall of China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Benin
The ignorance of this structure is partially due to the racism of the time and Britain's determination to erase Benin from history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Expedition_of_1897
It's no surprise it's not mentioned in the US. Thanks to a bunch of college students and religious extremists (granted they look like the Amish compared to more recent extremists but in the day they were certainly extremists) 40yr ago Iran went straight to the bottom of the priority list and there's never enough time to teach everything so only the highest priority items get covered.
The history of other regions and civilisations serve no such similar purpose and have been ignored.
Before pointing fingers at the West, does Iran take an extremely detailed view of its Persian History, that would not go well with Islamic Iran.
If a country wont look at its history why do expect others to look at that country's history?
Russia, not sure what you refer to here, but few written documents and sparsely populated areas explain the lack of historic research much better than american intent.
As for central asia, which civilization are you talking about ?
The sad reality of history is that having contemporaneous writings by the people involved adds a lot more color and detail to history than archeology, so people are naturally more interested - there's more that can be known!
That seems a very US-centric viewpoint. Plenty of Western archaeologists aren't Americans. For many European countries, the Roman Empire is an important chapter of their own history, so it is unsurprising that archaeologists in those countries would be interested in it-and their interest has nothing to do with the United States. (Even many of those parts of Europe which never were subject to Roman rule were nonetheless enormously influenced by Roman culture, through the spread of Christianity.)
The reason we know so much about Rome and Greece is that we have a lot of written material - histories, literature, poetry, letters, laws etc. Archeology is a relatively new science, while history (the study of written accounts) have existed since antiquity.
History is not just a question of what happened, but also about the effect of what happened. For example the Egyptian or Sumerian literature and philosophy might be just as magnificent as the Roman, but since those languages were lost it simply did not have the same effect on subsequent culture as Rome had.
While the Japanese Royal Family claimed descent from a God.
In other words, the Danish royal lineage descends from both Norse and Greek gods.
Why would people learn about some random kingdom which was a vassal under British rule?
My comment answers why you did not hear of them.
I remember looking for books on the history of Japan a while ago there. Fifty books about the glorious defeat of Japan in WWII, a few hour long books on their complete history, and a great courses lecture series.
My (WASP) uncle learned Japanese and moved to Tokyo because of a personal interest in that specific culture. I'm happy for him, glad he had a good experience. Should I now chastise him for not doing that with other cultures?
This `personal interest == bigotry` attitude is a problem.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shushtar_Historical_Hydraulic_...