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It is simply self-deception to imagine that we can de-toxify "civilization" to the point that for nine out of ten hearers "barbarism" will not spring to their minds as an antonym. "Civilize ... To reclaim from a savage state" (_New Webster's Expanded DIctionary_ 1991, compare almost any other any you will find something similar. I find it ludicrous that people have been using the PC label to libel those who question using the "C" word, and instead want to redefine it in virtually the same way (by fiat, against all historical logic and lexical precedent). Newspeak is BAD when I do it, but GOOD when you do it ... come on now! Let me bring in another example. Historians who are not trained as Africanists talk as if there are no written sources for an African history, as if 1) Oral history were not a valuable source (as in the case of the recovery of centuries buried ritual sites in Peru, for example). 2) There were not countless Arabic sources, going back a millenium, and major centers of higher learning that existed in sub-Saharan Africa. 3) Indigenous written African language sources (e.g. Vai) that preserve historical data. etc. British historians in the last fifty years first took the position that there was NO African history. As Africanists produced heaps of evidence to falsify that proposition, there came a grudging admission that Africa may in fact have a history, but that it was trivial--it had no REAL impact on REAL history. That attitude is prevalent, and persistent, because of a studied ignorance on the part of those who dismiss non-European peoples (whether in Austraila, the Trobriands, Africa, or the Americas) as inconsequential. There has been in print, for instance, record of some 40,000 (yes, forty thousand) iron smelters in operation between the IX and XIV centuries C.E., positioned precisely on the trans-Saharan trade routes--SINCE 1983! These were concentrated in one place and were unnecessary to the great African kingdoms AND to village Africa, all of whom were more or less equipped to meet their own metallurgical needs. Why would the African "Ruhr Valley" industrial heartland that functioned during the centuries of conflict between Christianity and Islam go unremarked, despite its clear export orientation? Because of the definitions (including "civilization") people bring to their non-study of Africa, their belief that nothing of historical importance occurred there! My dissertation was both fieldwork/anthropological and historical in nature, and I gained a great deal from working with blacksmiths in Africa. Yes, I am gradually working toward a synthesis of my own and others' work on iron in Africa. No, it is not out yet (but the material on the 40,000 furnaces is not mine, and has been in print for over a decade). When will someone deign to notice that sub-Saharan Africa may have been a major player in world history? Who knows? Never, if they continue to hold to naive definitions of history and civilization. One furnace could easily produce 50-100 pounds of iron in a smelt (and it is difficult to imagine anyone going to all that labor to only use a furnace once). Where I did my fieldwork, one furnace left a pile of slag 3x5x40+meters ... and if we figure even 60# of iron for each of 40,000 furnaces ... Where I worked, I found that smiths had consciously alloyed distinct ores to achieve rust-resistance and higher strength tools. Previous studies had simply sniffed at the "primitive" technology of an uncivilized people. In the lab I was able to show a low carbon steel alloyed with manganese and chromium (with tiny unmelted titanium granules probably serving an aggregate function much like gravel in concrete). Yes, that's coming out in print. My data, and the incredible sophistication of indigenous knowledge systems, isn't the point though. The point is that others had missed the obvious because of their condescending attitude. I also worked with farmers who maintained at least 112 varieties of rice in order to maximize yields in every possible circumstance. Or as the recently deceased Joseph Birdsell said when I took intro Anthro from him at UCLA back in 1961, (paraphrasing) 'the Australian aborigines I know could distinguish from 1,000 to 3,000 plants, know which were edible, which poisonous, how to leach the poisons out or use them to catch fish, recognize where an edible tuber might be found by the tiny hole left in the soil when the plant died and blew away, and so forth. When you can show me a PhD botanist who knows as much about as many plants, then you can use the word primitive in my classroom, otherwise it is forbidden.' To teach World Civ rather than World Societies and Cultures is to blind ourselves and our students in defense of an obsolete paradigm. Gordon C. Thomasson World History Faculty THOMASSON_G@SUNYBROOME.EDU
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