::sigh:: I knew that was going to be the answer. I was just hoping it wasn't.
It seems like such a badly-thought-through thing, to regularly give short-shrift to those civilizations which lost, especially if that time was so very long ago. I get why the propaganda of the day made the Gauls out to be violent ruffians who deserved to be stomped on for not giving way to Roman rule. But it's nearly 2000 years later, and in most books Celtic anything is relegated to a paragraph or sidebar. Or, worse yet, they get lumped in with the Mongols and the Visigoths in some self-satisfied look at "Barbarians Through the Ages". I just feel like the statute of limitations has run out on being elitist about who won and who lost and whose story we tell. Especially at a point in time when we in America should really be taking a look at the history of Rome, because we seem to be attempting to repeat it.
K. I'm off my soapbox now. It just makes me a little bit crazy, that's all. And it's completely true that doing one's own research is way better than just relying on what one learned in school, but you have to want it, and I'm afraid most people don't.
But this is my pet frustration. I'm sure there are other people who have the same one about different time periods and places, too. Hell, once you scratch the surface you find out that a lot of the history taught in school is misleading and wrong. It's just what we've been taught.
And that, Batman, is why we have QI. (http://www.qi.com/) :)
History is written by the winners, indeed.
It seems like such a badly-thought-through thing, to regularly give short-shrift to those civilizations which lost, especially if that time was so very long ago. I get why the propaganda of the day made the Gauls out to be violent ruffians who deserved to be stomped on for not giving way to Roman rule. But it's nearly 2000 years later, and in most books Celtic anything is relegated to a paragraph or sidebar. Or, worse yet, they get lumped in with the Mongols and the Visigoths in some self-satisfied look at "Barbarians Through the Ages". I just feel like the statute of limitations has run out on being elitist about who won and who lost and whose story we tell. Especially at a point in time when we in America should really be taking a look at the history of Rome, because we seem to be attempting to repeat it.
K. I'm off my soapbox now. It just makes me a little bit crazy, that's all. And it's completely true that doing one's own research is way better than just relying on what one learned in school, but you have to want it, and I'm afraid most people don't.
But this is my pet frustration. I'm sure there are other people who have the same one about different time periods and places, too. Hell, once you scratch the surface you find out that a lot of the history taught in school is misleading and wrong. It's just what we've been taught.
And that, Batman, is why we have QI. (http://www.qi.com/) :)
(You have a Batman icon! squee!)