chapter 11,12,13

Starting with chapter 11, we get a great sense of how Islam played a significant role in the development of afro-eurasia. Despite our view of Islam today, it was very forward thinking back in the day.  Albeit a rocky start, their contribution to science has been well documented especially in medicine (i.e. mapping the circulatory system).

Between the Turkish invasion and the crusades, the Islamic nation has seen their fair share of violence and conflict, but has stayed astute in philosophy and outward thinking.  There has been a plea, for many years by the Islamic community for people to separate what they se on television to what Islam really is. At its core it is a peaceful religion, but just like any other religion, there is a subset of those who will die to protect their very word.

Into chapter 12, it is apparent that nomads were largely unpopular as people who moved from place to place pillaging and attacking in order to survive, then moving on to the next village to do the same. Of course, they did not take the time to write down these conquest so there is no written record of such acts taking place by them, thus pure speculation. Many of the Germanic and Asian tribes have been portrayed as evil bold thirsty savages. Sounds like a good start to a “historically accurate” movie.  But, all in all, much like the religious zealots I mentioned before, this was probably a small subsection of people who went and took advantage of those who trusted weary travelers and of course, first impressions are everything.

Finally to chapter 13, what we learn here is how world history changes the more we start to look for evidence. It has always been said that, “history is written by the winners”, which is true, but it has been rewritten by the researchers. What we see here is that with many of the stories and accounts being potrayed in history, eventually we are going to see holes in the theories and explanations. Now did these people do it intentionally? We don’t know, the eyes see what the eyes see, and given that many of these stories were accounts of accounts it’s easy to think that the truth could be stretched a bit or parts forgotten. 

It’s like one big game of telephone, the only problem is that we have to buy the next edition of the history book at cost.