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Old 11-19-2008, 07:25 PM
 
1,016 posts, read 3,028,522 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Morphous01 View Post
Out of all the empires that we know of why is it that the Roman empire and the Egyptian empire are the only empires that the average person knows of?

Furthermore, if you look at Washington DC, all the buildings, street layouts, and words (i.e. Capitol Hill) stem from the Egyptian empire and Roman empire but I don't see much from any other empires.
I personally think that a lot of the reason the average person in the USA is more aware of Rome and the Egyptian Empire is religion. That's not to say that the average American is the product of religious indoctrination, but how many films have been made about these things? How many "Biblical Epics" were done between the 50s and 60s?

Another thing is that for many Americans, Rome and Egypt have the most time spent on them in the standard World History classes. The Sumerian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires are barely touched upon. Alexander the Great and Hellenism is touched upon, but the Golden Age of Athens tends to draw more concentration.

That's one man's opinion.
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Old 11-19-2008, 07:43 PM
 
Location: Parts Unknown, Northern California
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I think you've raised some valid points, Travis. The Christian oriented education that has become the norm in the western world, places emphasis on things related to Christianity. Ancient Rome, which was taken to Christianity by Constantine, is related. Ancient Greece, ancient Persia, ancient China...they were not.

My parents sent me to Catholic schools and the indoctrination program there was heavy, even to the point of wrectched distortions and outright lies. Rome was presented as an evil pagan empire which was redeemed by the blossoming of Christianity, rather than as the cultural center of western civilization which started to collapse about the time it went Christian. The Crusades were presented as utterly justified, indeed, as a good vs evil story, heroic Christian knights vs the bad, nasty and wicked Islamic Turks. Nothing was ever said about the assorted massacres of Jews along the way, I don't even recall them ever telling us that the crusades ultimately failed. Not a word was ever said in our history classes about the Inquisition or Salem witch trials.

I had to unlearn much of what I was taught in Catholic history courses before I could start getting a grasp on what really happened.
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Old 11-20-2008, 08:48 AM
 
13,134 posts, read 40,522,342 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Morphous01 View Post
Furthermore, if you look at Washington DC, all the buildings, street layouts, and words (i.e. Capitol Hill) stem from the Egyptian empire and Roman empire but I don't see much from any other empires.
Seems like i've read or heard somewhere about George Washington and some of the early founding fathers were admirers of the Roman Dictator Cincinnatus who in 457 b.c. was appointed that position by the romans to help them defeat the Aequians and as soon as the war was over instead of remaining Dictator for life he resigned it and went back to being a simple farmer in the Republic.
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Old 11-20-2008, 02:02 PM
 
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A big part of the reason that Washington D.C. has that Greco-Roman look to it is because Neoclassical Architecture was all the rage in the late 18th-early 19th centuries.
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Old 11-20-2008, 02:41 PM
 
3,440 posts, read 8,022,703 times
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Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
I had to unlearn much of what I was taught in Catholic history courses before I could start getting a grasp on what really happened.

This is why I HATE modern education. If you do your own homework you quickly learn there is a method to the madness.
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Old 11-20-2008, 02:56 PM
 
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Originally Posted by CLTKing View Post
Several more empires:

Armenian Empire, Trebizond Empire, Haitian Empire, Empire of Brazil, Central African Empire, Japanese Empire (the only monarchy left with an emperor).

Aaahh, the Japanese empire. They are a bunch of crooks! They stole, looted and killed from everybody around them. To this day expeditions are launched to recover some of the gold, bullion, diamonds and old artifacts (some were melted down) that were hidden due to orders from Hirohito.

You all do know that Hirohito, to avoid charges of war crimes, surrendered millions of dollars worth of treasure to the U.S.
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