Not All Civilizations are Equal

Storm Shelter
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John Hinderacker is one of my favorite political writers. A graduate of Dartmouth, he and two other Dartmouth graduates, all lawyers, put together one of the best political blogs on the net calling it Powerline. Hinderaker lives in Minnesota, so he wrote very authoritatively about the miscarriage of justice and unwarranted imprisonment of Derek Chauvin.

Hinderaker is a fan of Teaching Company’s Great Courses and writes a delightful essay on wokeness affecting truth in the writings of notable historians. Academics are afraid, I suppose justifiably, of recognizing the height of European civilizations over others in particular African civilizations during the age of discovery, that is, as seen by Western historians.

I have not to date sample these aural books, but Hinderaker says Heather Mac Donald really likes them, and I have the absolute utmost respect for MacDonald who writes for the City Journal as being one of the finest writers in the world in her particular genre. So be forewarned, I am going to be sprucing up on my history knowledge.

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The article has glaring falsities. He’s not real keen on reality, I suppose. Maybe he has a problem with reading comprehension or simply is dishonest, like you.

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Portugal landed in Morocco in 1415 under the command of King John 1. Morocco had languages dating back far before Portugal. Morocco was filled with Phoenicians in the 8th Century BCE, Carthaginians in 110-81BCE and then Rome in 33 BCE.

While Portugal was occopied by pre-Iberian people’s until Rome took it over in the 3rd Century, BCE. We don’t have much info pre-Rome because THEY DIDN’T DEVELOP A WRITING SYSTEM.You should know this, linguist. However, I suppose that’s probably another lie you’ve told like everything else. What became the Celts existed in Portugal and Spain while Morocco was drenched in literature and cultural history. Celts, as we know, didn’t develop writing for a LONG time thereafter…to the 4th to 6th centuries CE.

Morocco even played a role in early Greco-Roman Mythology being that Atlas is associated with the Atlas Mountains and is said to have been the first king of Maurentania. The 12 Impossible Tasks given to Hercules included stealing the “golden apples” from the garden of Hesperidies, purported to have been in or around Lixus. Juba II, king of Mauretania, authored works in both Latin and Greek and was referred to by Pliny the Elder. Of course, in the 8th C AD, Islam took it over and it had a wealth of literature from that point on.

It appears your author doesn’t know even the basics of the argument to which he’s attempting to start.

His attempt to discuss the scientific achievement of the caravel by the Portuguese in the 15th century negates the fact that the place they invaded was Morocco, which was founded by Phoenicians in the 8 century BCE, the greatest navigators of their time, and of course…having the oldest written alphabet in history. But, they started in 3000 BCE…long, long before Portugal existed. Every place has their cycles.
Portugal’s was just more recent than the Phoenicians or Moors or Umayeds, etc.

Your guy sucks at basic history. Good try though…mildly viable rhetoric for dumb people, so i guess I’ll give him a little credit. He understands how to use a period, nouns and verbs. That’s about it.

If you presented this in a paper to class, you’d get an F for being simply too lazy to learn anything about which you’re attempting to discuss. Pathetic attempt.

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Your post is actually interesting, and I enjoyed it. I am linguist but not a historical linguist. My training was in contrastive phonological analysis and theoretical linguistics. Courses I took in historical linguistics treated only Indo-European languages.

Classifying Phoenician as an African language is a stretch nor is it the oldest written language. Both Sumarian and Egyptian are older. Further, Islam is not native to Africa. No African nations, nor can the Phoenicians compare with Europeans as mariners during the Age of Discovery.

Hinderaker’ article is not only interesting but persuasive. And, he’s right about the cultural superiority of European civilization. The comparisons become even greater when considering advances in science and invention. That superiority is even evident when you consider the hoard crossing our Southern border; there are no such hoards trying to breach the borders of African nations.

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It was used in Africa, as evidenced by historical records. At no point did anyone make the claim it was created in Africa. However, English is considered and American language yet it didn’t originate here either.

Again, nobody made the claim it is the oldest language. It has the oldest alphabet. Sumerian and Egyptians used cuneiform wedges and hieroglyphics. Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek scripts are all descended from Phoenician. Again, your reading comprehension is atrocious.

So, what? Has literally nothing to do with the argument.

Again, you’re really not good at this. Without the Phoenicians, you don’t have the Age of Discovery. History isn’t built in a day or in a vacuum. Each piece is a foundation for the next.

You really don’t have much to stand on with this argument and have been summarily dismissed, old man. I haven’t even brought up Egypt, who lasted longer on top than any Western country in history, or even the entire West combined.