Major Historical Events I Never Learned About In School
We, as Americans, imagine this nice line of “succession” from Greece to Rome, to England, to America (maybe tossing Egypt at the front of that line for some reason or ). It’s really odd. We have about as much in common with Greece as we do with, say, the kingdoms of the Scandinavian countries but I bet your history class taught you more about Caesar and didn’t even mention Olaf II of Norway (or the Battle of Stiklestad).
The weird thing I remember about my early historical education is that we really only touched on those “succession countries” and learned about other ones only really when they were in relation to them.
Here are a list of major historical events / places I was not taught in school:
-The Three Kingdoms Period of China (thank you Dynasty Warriors).
-How badass Admiral Yi of Korea was.
-Anything about preclassic Mesoamerican culture aside from some notes about the Mayan and Aztec cultures outside of the Conquistadors.
-Africa. Like, at all.
-The golden age that occurred for China and the Islamic world during the pretty Eurocentrically named “Dark Ages”.
-Literally anything to do with Polynesia.
-Who the hell is Ned Kelly?
-Most of Indian history until Gandhi.
-That whole Persia place (unless we are talking about it in relationship to Greece / Alexander).
-We did talk about the Mongolians but not 1/100th the amount we should have.
-The Rus states until “Russia” was totally already a thing.
-The shit Justinian had to put up with.
-The Bronze Age Collapse.
-About how magnificent Suleiman the Magnificent was.
-Native American history (like that whole “Great Law of Peace” thing? Kinda important.)
-Events occurring in the southern hemisphere. I knew more about Shackleton’s expedition than about the history of Chili or the Falkland Islands War. I never heard of Simon Bolivar.
(etc)
So.
I hate these “I pointed something out! Aren’t I smart!” articles.
What can we do about it?
I only came across most of this stuff because I watch stupid numbers of history videos on YouTube, listen to lecture series on it pretty regularly, and my dad was super into history and would tell me about it before bed.
I think one thing that would be good would be to continue to share videos/articles with our friends on topics relating to this, talk with folks about it, and just “keep that flame of knowledge burning bright”.
But in all seriousness- I want to put together that Aggregation Education site that would allow me to compile sources for topics like this from various free online sources so students of all background can navigate them easily in a collected format. Looking for a sponsoring education institution.
Few notes:
-European culture wasn’t super obsessed with the Greeks until the enlightenment period when we decided they were the height of fashion.
-Alexander the Great was “just some dude” for most of history and interest in/ celebration of him didn’t really occur until Napoleon got a history-boner for him and decided to emulate him sorta. (And yes- he was popular before that, just not AS popular)
-Wanna hear some cool shit from Africa? Look up Musa of the Mali Kingdom. He literally showed up out of nowhere on a pilgrimage to Mecca and is a legitimate contender for the richest man in all of history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_I_of_Mali)
-The Mongols were a larger force of change in the world and FAR more impressive military conquers than any Macedonia, Greek, or Roman. I’d say “fight me” but fight those Mongolians- they’ll kick your ass.
