Read Online Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen - Free Book Online
Authors: James W. Loewen
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another social archetype: our culture
views modern technology as a European development. So the Afro-Phoenicians' feats do not
conform to the textbooks' overall story line about how white Europeans taught the rest of
the world how to do things. None of the textbooks credits the Muslims with preserving
Greek wisdom, enhancing it with ideas from China, India, and Africa, and then passing on
the resulting knowledge to Europe via Spain. Instead, they show Henry inventing navigation
and imply that before Europe there was nothing, at least nothing modern.
In fact, Henry's work was based mostly on ideas that were known to the ancient Egyptians
and Phoenicians and had been developed further in Arabia, North Africa, and China, Even
the word the Portuguese applied to their new ships, caravel, derived from the Egyptian caravos.1 Cultures do not evolve in a vacuum; diffusion of ideas is perhaps the most important cause
of cultural development. Contact with other cultures often triggers a cultural
flowering. Anthropologists call this phenomenon efflorescence. Children in elementary
school learn that Persian and Mediterranean civilizations flowered in antiquity due to
their location on trade routes. Here with Henry at the dawn of European world domination,
textbooks have a golden opportunity to apply this same idea of cultural diffusion to
Europe, They squander it. Not only did Henry have to develop new instruments, according to The American Way, but “people didn't know how to build seagoing ships, either,”“ Students are left without a
clue as to how aborigines ever reached Australia, Polynesians reached Madagascar, or Afro
Phoenicians reached the Canaries. By ”people" Way means, of course, Europeansa textbook example of Eurocentrism.
These books are expressions of what the anthropologist Stephen Jett calls “the doctrine of
the discovery of America by Columbus.”1“ Table 1 provides a chronological list of expeditions that may have reached the Americas
before Columbus, with comments on the quality of the evidence for each as of 1994.1[ While the list is long, it is still probably incomplete. A map found in Turkey dated 1513
and said to be based on material from the library of Alexander the Great includes
coastline details of South America and Antarctica. Ancient Roman coins keep turning up all
over the Americas, causing some archaeologists to conclude that Roman seafarers visited
the Americas more than once,22 Native Americans also crossed the Atlantic: anthropologists conjecture that Native
Americans voyaged east millennia ago from Canada to Scandinavia or Scotland. Two Indians
shipwrecked in Holland around 60 B.C. became major curiosities in Europe.”
The evidence for each of these journeys offers fascinating glimpses into the societies and
cultures that existed on both sides of the Atlantic and in Asia before 1492, They also
reveal controversies among those who study the distant past. If textbooks allowed for
controversy, they could show students which claims rest on strong evidence, which on
softer ground. As they challenged students to make their own decisions as to what
probably happened, they would also be introducing students to the various methods and
forms of evidence oral history, written records, cultural similarities, linguistic
changes, human blood types, pottery, archaeological dating, plant migrationsthat
researchers use to derive knowledge about the distant past. Unfortunately, textbooks seem
locked into a rhetoric of certainty. James West Davidson and Mark H. Lytle, coauthors of
the textbook The United StatesA History of the Republic, have also written After the Fact, a book for college history majors in which they emphasize that history is not a set of
facts but a series of arguments, issues, and controversies,14 Davidson and Lytle's high school textbook, howevet, like its competitors, presents history
views modern technology as a European development. So the Afro-Phoenicians' feats do not
conform to the textbooks' overall story line about how white Europeans taught the rest of
the world how to do things. None of the textbooks credits the Muslims with preserving
Greek wisdom, enhancing it with ideas from China, India, and Africa, and then passing on
the resulting knowledge to Europe via Spain. Instead, they show Henry inventing navigation
and imply that before Europe there was nothing, at least nothing modern.
In fact, Henry's work was based mostly on ideas that were known to the ancient Egyptians
and Phoenicians and had been developed further in Arabia, North Africa, and China, Even
the word the Portuguese applied to their new ships, caravel, derived from the Egyptian caravos.1 Cultures do not evolve in a vacuum; diffusion of ideas is perhaps the most important cause
of cultural development. Contact with other cultures often triggers a cultural
flowering. Anthropologists call this phenomenon efflorescence. Children in elementary
school learn that Persian and Mediterranean civilizations flowered in antiquity due to
their location on trade routes. Here with Henry at the dawn of European world domination,
textbooks have a golden opportunity to apply this same idea of cultural diffusion to
Europe, They squander it. Not only did Henry have to develop new instruments, according to The American Way, but “people didn't know how to build seagoing ships, either,”“ Students are left without a
clue as to how aborigines ever reached Australia, Polynesians reached Madagascar, or Afro
Phoenicians reached the Canaries. By ”people" Way means, of course, Europeansa textbook example of Eurocentrism.
These books are expressions of what the anthropologist Stephen Jett calls “the doctrine of
the discovery of America by Columbus.”1“ Table 1 provides a chronological list of expeditions that may have reached the Americas
before Columbus, with comments on the quality of the evidence for each as of 1994.1[ While the list is long, it is still probably incomplete. A map found in Turkey dated 1513
and said to be based on material from the library of Alexander the Great includes
coastline details of South America and Antarctica. Ancient Roman coins keep turning up all
over the Americas, causing some archaeologists to conclude that Roman seafarers visited
the Americas more than once,22 Native Americans also crossed the Atlantic: anthropologists conjecture that Native
Americans voyaged east millennia ago from Canada to Scandinavia or Scotland. Two Indians
shipwrecked in Holland around 60 B.C. became major curiosities in Europe.”
The evidence for each of these journeys offers fascinating glimpses into the societies and
cultures that existed on both sides of the Atlantic and in Asia before 1492, They also
reveal controversies among those who study the distant past. If textbooks allowed for
controversy, they could show students which claims rest on strong evidence, which on
softer ground. As they challenged students to make their own decisions as to what
probably happened, they would also be introducing students to the various methods and
forms of evidence oral history, written records, cultural similarities, linguistic
changes, human blood types, pottery, archaeological dating, plant migrationsthat
researchers use to derive knowledge about the distant past. Unfortunately, textbooks seem
locked into a rhetoric of certainty. James West Davidson and Mark H. Lytle, coauthors of
the textbook The United StatesA History of the Republic, have also written After the Fact, a book for college history majors in which they emphasize that history is not a set of
facts but a series of arguments, issues, and controversies,14 Davidson and Lytle's high school textbook, howevet, like its competitors, presents history
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