"Thus if you built, monumentally, in stone and left your debris conveniently in a single place, you were likely to be “discovered” and to dominate the pages of ancient history. If, on the other hand, you built with wood, bamboo, or reeds, you were much less"
History is a skewed record made up of only what is preserved and does not tell the full stories of all ancient civilizations.
"latest five percent of our history" "Civilization" is fairly recent and has existed during a rapid change in development and living.
were organised not as empires or even kingdoms, but fiercely autonomous republics, long before the Spanish conquest
Different cultural views of "civilization"
so long as reputable publishers of academic books and journals continue to accept work based on such sources, we’re unlikely to see much progress
Publications perpetuating misinformation
Today it seems very possible that another 2,000 years of world governance by ‘powerful extractive elites’ could lead to the destruction of most life on Earth.
Empires only benefit those in leadership roles or those with wealth.
What ‘advantages’, we might ask, accrued to a girl captured by Cilician pirates, and sold in the slave markets of Roman-era Delos, over one living freely in the Nuba Hills of southern Kordofan?
Broad looks of the history of societies and cultures ignore and erase the individuals who experienced life at that time.
described as ‘scattered people’, ‘head-bangers’ or simply ‘enemies’. In the early centuries BCE, emissaries of the Han Empire wrote in similar ways about the rebellious marsh-dwellers of the tropical coastlands to their south. Historians now see these ancient inhabitants of Guangdong and Fujian through Han eyes, as the ‘Bai-yue’ (‘Hundred Yue’), who were said to shave their heads, cover their bodies in tattoos, and sacrifice live humans to their savage gods.
Groups that did not fit into the empire's ideals of life were demonized and othered to justify their conquering and the violence brought against them.
3,000 years ago
Long history of colonialism
Gibbon’s barbarian is an inveterate idler: free, yes, but only to live in scattered homesteads, wearing skins for clothes, or following his ‘monstrous herds of cattle’. ‘Their poverty,’ wrote Gibbon of the ancient Germans, ‘secured their freedom.’
"free" equates to "not being civilized"
Kushans
now Afghanistan, Eastern Iran, India, Pakistan, Western Nepal, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
Parthians
Indus River to the Euphrates