Not so much knowledge in history

[Connacht]

Inspired by the posts in the "Things you learnt from playing vanilla" topic, I thought it would be nice to move the OT talking about people ignoring history in a new thread, where we can talk about silly, crazy, unbelievable things we heard during our life.

Here are the first posts:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Is this normal for European countries? Kids in Russia seemed much smarter. Europe is better than US in geography, but then any country is. What about history though? How much better are Europeans in history? I have traveled to almost very European country, but it is very difficult to tell how smart the people are in a certain country just after spending week in there. BTW, according to the stuff I read in the Economist as well as Time magazines, British students were just as bad as the American ones. Continental Europe was much better and Asian countries such as China, Japan and South Korea were the best, of course.

People here in the UK just seem to be getting dumber. One example is that 3/4 of the students in my year have no idea where Austria is ("your family are from where?") and another example is that, on finding out that one of my friends was Polish someone asked if he could speak "Poland."

Let´s just say that were I to ask anyone in my class who Hannibal was they´d think I was talking about the cannibal. One or two might after a while realise that there is someone else known as Hannibal, but it´s doubtful.

I´d say Julius Ceasar is the only Roman who´s name most would recognise, unless they´ve just watched Gladiator, in which case they might recognise at most 2 or 3 more names.
The Seleukids, Parthians, Ptolemy´s, Carthaginians... all totally unheard of. Alexander the Great is only known as "that gay guy who conquered a lot of shit", and knowledge about ancient Gaul, Germania or Britain is completely unexistant.
Well, some might recognise that Asterix and Obelix were Gauls and lived in France, but that´s about it.

Thats just so on the spot!!!

Sometimes, you marvel at the historical ignorance of some people...

Having been passionately facinated by ancient history for more than a decade, I always assumed that people knew, at least to some extent, who Hannibal or Attila was. So when in High School, upon discussing ancient Rome, I made a reference to the former's crossing of the alps, people basicly asked in which of the movies that was...

Or when, upon discussing the death of king Charles XII, (Swedish king, killed at Halden, Norway, in 1718, alledgedly shot with a uniform's button by a friendly soldier), someone asked why they didn't use a DNA-swab to expose the murderer...

Really, I think its sad that some people so completely lack knowledge of large parts of the history of the world, as this, in many ways, still influence the world today.

I'll willing to bet you guys money that you can't find a person [who isn't on this forum and who isn't a historian or archaeologist] who knows who Ashurbanipal was.

I'm in High School and we just finished our first history course (out of two, the other one focusing solely on Finnish history), which astoundingly dealt with everything from the rise of civilization to the beginning of the 18th century. Anyway, most people did know that Hannibal was a military leader who crossed the Alps in order to invade Italy, but when we got to the part that he was Punic everyone besides me asked in unison what on earth that meant. It's sort of disappointing, since I'm completeing the IB diplomma program in one of the most demanding schools in the country and even here people have only a rudimentary grasp of history. I know that the IB is natural sciences oriented but still, one would assume that Carthage is something everybody has heard of.

It is normal that people in US don't know geography. Even some newspapers or televisions haven't realised thet Czechoslovakia splited 15 years ago or that Slovakia and Slovenia are two different states. But if you ask somebody in Europe about some US states, perhaps except for California, Florida, Alaska, Texas or Hawai, he will have no idea where the others are. The same goes for US history.
Especially in post-socialistic countries schools demand encyclopedic knowledge and so people know a lot of facts. If you search results for example from some international scielnce olympiads, you will discover that most successful are countries from eastern Asia and eastern Europe. Secondary schools are on higher level here, but it's much worse with universities.

And I learned a lot from playing RTW because thnks to it I disovered EB which taught me a lot.

I have an idea: let's prepare some questions from history (like who was Pyrrhus, what do you know about Seleucid empire, how do you imagine barbarian cultures...) and make a survey among people from our countries. Every forum member who will do this will post his results and we will have some kind of global ancient history knowledge study.

OK, first question: Who is Hannibal Barca?
What is Carthage?

and on topic, I lerned that Epirus wasn't in existance, and neither was Phyrrus

I just remembered something quite amusing that took place during our history lesson. Some of my classmates had done a presentation about Indian history from about 300 BC to 200 AD. When I asked them about the Indo-Greek kingdoms they just stared at me with a mixture of total disbelief and amazement and asked me if I just made up the question.

Second question: What do you think happened to Alexander the Great's empire after he died?

I also heard many things that here in Italy we would call "castronerie" when I still was at high school. Here the stereotype about us is that people living in Italy should well know Mediterranean history, at least Roman and Greek one.
However, I even saw somebody who even didn't know where Asia Minor is during school times. (I could also tell you about those who couldn't find Dalmatia on the map and a friend of mine who believed that Mexico was in South America - another friend instead neither knew it was in America).

Another incredible show was this:

Italian literature teacher: "where is Carthage?"
Student: "hmmm, er... there, in Morocco"
Teacher: "uh"

(nobody noticed that)

My first high school history book also quoted the topoi about barbarians, IIRC. Yes, they were all uncivilized grunters, except the Gauls that lived near Massilia, since it was a Greek colony, and those that entered in contact with the Romans in the province of Gallia Narbonensis. Well, they were the ones that become civilized and opened the doors of civilization for the other Gauls, the other ones being dirty, unorganized savages.

[Rodrico Stak]

Perhaps not the most extreme example of this, but the first one I can think of:

We were learning about ancient Egypt in my humanities class:

My Humanities teacher: ...ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for over 3000 years, ending after the end of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, who were Greeks who ruled Egypt on behalf of the Persian Empire.
Me: Um... actually it was Alexander the Great's empire.
Someone else: No! It was the Roman Empire!
Humanities teacher: That's right, it was the Roman Empire.
Me: ... no, it was the empire of Alexander the Great.
Humanities teacher: Ok, that's right. But it wasn't really involved with his empire, they just happened to be contemporary.
Me: ... (thinking: this is hopeless, I'm not even going to argue this further. Let's just ignore the fact that he was one of Alexander's generals.)

[Zeibek]

This doesn't totally relate to history, but the ignorance behind it is amusing enough. In Junior High during our Civics lesson we looked at the online database of Finnish names over the past century. The teacher picked someone called Muhammed and asked us how was it possible that an Islamic name appeared in Finland in 1902. Here's the discussion that followed:

Someone: What, there were Somalis here?
Me: No, it's most obviously a Tatar name.
Teacher: Yes, it was a Tatar name. They were brought here by the Czar to quel the unruly provinces as elite troops.
Someone else: What, the Somput? (Somppu is derogatory term for Somalis, more or less like nigger)
Third someone: Yeah, I bet they were biological weapons.
*Whole class starts laughing frantically*

It probably sounds only racist and ignorant but at the time it seemed just incredibly absurd to me. I laughed with everyone else, but more at the absurdity of the comments. Then I experienced this great surge of feeling superior in comparison to almost everybody else there. It was a scary feeling. Almost as scary as the fact that I was going to an international school where like a fourth of the students were either foreign or had a foreign parent.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

It's one thing when a highschool level gets something wrong or even at the college level, but for me some of the biggest events such as these have occured when watching the History Channel. There have been times when I just had to scream at the TV. One time a show said, "...when the Romans arrived in Egypt in the third century BC..." I don't know if they meant the Greeks / Ptolemaioi or if they really meant the Romans and had the wrong time because they then talked about mummies...

[theoldbelgian]

this what was in our textbooks about our very forefathers the old begians:
the old belgians lived in huts, lived of hunt and fishing.
they also threwed dice and drunk beer
now doesn't that sound nice

[Tellos Athenaios]

To me it realy depends - there are so many areas of which I myself don't know anything at all... Discussions like these are an easy 'victory', only people similarly minded really attend, and they would agree with you. Despite the fact you are not very likely to know much about it either... For instance...

I find it mildly amusing that quite a few of the older people around (where I live, I mean) are likely to complain about the lack of knowledge on dates, times etcetera among the younger generations. Invariably they will only know a couple themselves -- and usually among those is the absolute pinaccle of insigificant battles ever fought: 1600 battle of Nieuwpoort. If I ask them what's so special about 1898..?

Similarly they'll go on and on about how they didn't have pocket calculators (and frankly there's something about that which isn't completely 100% waste of time) yet ask anyone of them to compute the highest prime number under 100? (Answer: 97.)

[||Lz3||]

once, my philosophy teacher said the roman empire was created in 800bc... and that alexander was after it... emm what?

I tried to help but it was hopeless so... meh

[Legosoldier]

once, my philosophy teacher said the roman empire was created in 800bc... and that alexander was after it... emm what?

I tried to help but it was hopeless so... meh

Suppose he meant that the city of Rome was founded that time?

[General Appo]

I have quite a general knowledge pf pretty much all aspects of history, which really none of my classmates have. Of course, when it comes to the antique I am somewhat more then just generally knowledgable, and in the eyes of my classmates a true expert.
We don´t discuss history a lot in my school, but the few times we do, it generally sucks. My teacher is pretty okay, but you know, he´s follows the book and really don´t know enough about every subject to point out where it´s wrong.
Admittedly I am 14 and should perhaps not expect any sort of higher education yet, but seriously, we saw Gladiator during history class!

Oh, just remember this old post by me. I was rather aggravated when making it, but my viewpoints still stand.

"ARGGH!! I wasted 80 minutes today attending a history class in my school. We were reading about the middle to late Roman republic, and I couldn´t believe the bullshit we were being told. Firstly my teacher tells everybody plus writes on the board in big letters that the Roman Senate always had 300 members, during the middle and late republic. Ridiculous.
Then he went on saying (reading straight from our books of course) that the Senators were above the Generals on the social pyramid, completely ignoring that nearly all Generals were Senators, and high-ranking such. He also made it sound like the Consuls had nothing to do with the military, and that the Comitia Tributa (of course he didn´t call it that) was arranged very democraticly, with everyones vote counting equally.
After hearing some sensational bullshit about Hannibal and the Second Punic War and how he used 500 elephants in every battle to defeat the Romans until he was defeated (not known how), we skipped ahead to the Third one, were the Romans killed every single person in Carthage, burnt the city until no trace of it was left, salted the earth and abandoned it forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. And EVER!!! The fact that most of the population were sold into slavery, that several meters high buildings were left standing, that the salting of the earth is just an old myth, and that Carthage was the third biggest city in the Roman Empire, were all completely forgotten.
Now we skipped again to Gaius Marius, the great and noble dude who not only defeated a gigantic horde of savage Germans, but completely reformed the Roman army, kicking the worthless skirmishers and cavalry out of it. Who needs supportive troops when you´ve got Legionaries, the best men in the world, all worth at least 50 of those hairy barbarians, who certainly didn´t invent the soap.
Now we skip again (no mention of Gracchi brothers, Marius later career, Sulla or anything else) to the noble Spartacus. A savage wilderbeast from the darkness of the barbarian lands fighting for his freedom, Spartacus was a mixture of Wallace in Braveheart and Conan the Barbarian, and usually killed about 400 Romans all by himself in every battle, until finally the evil and ruthless Pompey through deceitful ways managed to kill him and crucify tens of thousands of slaves.
Spartacus certainly wasn´t an educated man, and it certainly wasn´t someone named Crassus who defeated him. The whole inclusion of Pompey is just to set the stage for the greatest hero of them all, the great and noble, the saviour of the Roman Republic and the whole world, Gaius Julius CEASAR!!!! This incredibly nice guy not only defeated the vicious Gauls, but also fought for the freedom of all Romans against the evil coalition of Pompey and the Senate. When Ceasar finally won he was brutally murdered by the evil Brutus, but his noble son killed that son of a bitch, and after the wierdo Antony and his Egyptian whore had killed eachother made himself Emperor, and saved the Republic!! Hooray!!!
Now I´m just wondering, where the fu*k did the people who wrote this book get their infromation? Because of quick Wiki-fuc*ing-pedia search in the English, Swedish and fuc*ing Icelandic version will tell you, THAT THERE WERE NO MOTHERFUC*ING 300 PEOPLE IN THE ROMAN FUC*ING SENATE!!! SHIT!!!!!!!! *headbangs keyboard. tfgvbvyhbujik"

[Remco]

Well, we shouldn't blame people for not knowing, since most teachers don't know what they are talking about. Everything I know about history, mostly antiquity and WOII, I taught myself. But lets not be to hard on people who don't know about history. I bett I could ask you trivial questions on the subject of mathematics and physics and only a few would know the answer. Everybody has his own field of interest. Sadly this is mostly about utter crap.

[General Appo]

Not at all. I bet you there is nothing my friends know more about than me. Seriously, from Roman history to classic rock to internet slang to mathematics to geography to gourmet to philosophy to brittish comedy to apartheid to demographics to tele marketing to window polishing to top scorers in the Serie A to Swedish politics in the 50´s to bicycle maintanance to photoshop editing to CounterStrike gaming to American jazz to Russian folkdance to pencil factories to penny eating to guitarr playing to the firing of firearms to US Marine slang to nailbiting to sex positions to just about everything, I know just as much or more than my friends.
But then again, I am amazing.

[ludwag]

ouch. why diddnt you finish the argue? I had some of the same. Where my history-teacher said that the empire of alexander was bigger than the persian. but i said no, but he refused to accept. We was talking about the size. But then i did something stupid: i mentioned that alexanders empire was greater becouse it included greece. and he started relying upon that.

i havent learnt anything in my historic class exept the name of some ice-age guy. not even in the history book. i am looking forvard to start learning history for real after i finish highscool.

[penguinking]

My history textbook in an ancient history class I took has almost nothing on the Celts, other than one sentence about the Gallic Wars ("Within seven years, he conquered what is now Northern France and Belgium and invaded Britain") and one more sentence about how some Gauls fought with Hannibal ("The Gauls, who were enemies of the Romans, joined Hannibal and boosted his numbers to almost 50,000").
Therefore, our class spent no time on them.

[Celtic_Punk]

i havent learnt anything in my historic class exept the name of some ice-age guy. not even in the history book. i am looking forvard to start learning history for real after i finish highscool.

OTZI!!!!!!!!!
WOOT!

it was the same thing with me Appo in history class. My peers were total retards, I helped teach the class with my teacher. She was absolutely brilliant! She was a good Art/History/Philosophy/Liberal studies teacher. In the eyes of my peers I was a fucking professor... and i know dick all compared to the people on this forum about antiquity. I know a lot about WWII though, that was my first passion.

IIRC our history text book said pre-roman Briton and Irish Celts were smelly uncivilized savages who committed human sacrifice and ate the entrails to prove their devotion to the Gods. Also it said that Caesar conquered Briton (right obviously) but never mentioned briton throwing off the shackles of Roman rule. THEY ALSO never mentioned that they never took Caledonia. THEY ALSO said that Alexander was a big poof who conquered "ALL" of the known world, and but was defeated by Rome. (did not mention when he died, the wording made it sound like he fought and lost against rome) *smashes head off desk* Highschool is definitely retarded. Never take what you learn there to be 100% fact... actually not even 50% fact!

[General Appo]

Hehe, yeah.

What I find amusing is that as soon as we pass 1000 AD 80% of everything we learn in history is about Sweden. Before then, like 5% is. It´s like "before the vikings there lived some people in Sweden who hunted deers and eat roots and couldn´t do jack shit".
Just.... argh! Why do everything before 1000AD have to be about the Romans and Greeks? Annoying.

[Hegix]

Until we reached 1658 in history class all we learned about was other peoples history. First Greeks and Romans then Swedes. Denmark was an evil warmongering nation in the south, but noone mentions that we were Danes.

I recently sat next to a group of teens discussing the new Arn movie (Swedish movie about a crusader that travels from Sweden to Jerusalem, becomes friends with Saladin, then travels back and defeats the Danes) when they talked about how "we" defeated the Danes in the end. I felt an urge to walk up to them and slap them for their ignorance.

As a side note, until I started playing EB I had no idea who the Epirotes were. I knew about Pyrrhus and his "victory", but always figured Epirus was an Italian city-state or something. I have the EB team to thank for firing up an interest in ancient history that I never really had before.

[Remco]

Not at all. I bet you there is nothing my friends know more about than me. Seriously, from Roman history to classic rock to internet slang to mathematics to geography to gourmet to philosophy to brittish comedy to apartheid to demographics to tele marketing to window polishing to top scorers in the Serie A to Swedish politics in the 50´s to bicycle maintanance to photoshop editing to CounterStrike gaming to American jazz to Russian folkdance to pencil factories to penny eating to guitarr playing to the firing of firearms to US Marine slang to nailbiting to sex positions to just about everything, I know just as much or more than my friends.
But then again, I am amazing.

Obviously I was talking was talking about people not gods. I was trying to say that not everybody can be a history buff.

But seriously, maybe you are right. There are a lot of dumb, ignorant people. You know what a hate most? When people have an opinion on something while they don't know the facts. Like the LHC from CERN in Switzerland. A lot of people were scarred by it and taught it should not be used. This while several independant reports stated it is perfectly safe. The same shit applies the UMTS and GSM base stations.

[General Appo]

Until we reached 1658 in history class all we learned about was other peoples history. First Greeks and Romans then Swedes. Denmark was an evil warmongering nation in the south, but noone mentions that we were Danes.

I recently sat next to a group of teens discussing the new Arn movie (Swedish movie about a crusader that travels from Sweden to Jerusalem, becomes friends with Saladin, then travels back and defeats the Danes) when they talked about how "we" defeated the Danes in the end. I felt an urge to walk up to them and slap them for their ignorance.

We noble Swedes would be Danes? How dare you?! Obviously we are The Superior Race, destined to rule the world with our blonde hair flying in the wind, our steelblue eyes seeing all and with a dozen of our legendary bimbos at our side.

[Zeibek]

Well, we shouldn't blame people for not knowing, since most teachers don't know what they are talking about. Everything I know about history, mostly antiquity and WOII, I taught myself. But lets not be to hard on people who don't know about history. I bett I could ask you trivial questions on the subject of mathematics and physics and only a few would know the answer.

Not necessarily. Though the question "Who was Hannibal Barca?" relates to history it's so basic that everybody should know it. I immensly dislike the natural sciences (or the way they are taught at least) yet know what the letters in E=mc2 stand for, know Newton's laws of motion etc., but people who are into natural sciences rarely bother to learn even the most rudimentary historical facts. That can sometimes really piss me off. I'm not talking about being a history buff, I'm talking about the most basic knowledge everyone with some form of education should posess.

[Europe]

The stories in this thread are so bad it makes my own school look good! At least we got to learn about the first civilisations (Egypt, Babylon) and the Chinese dynasties.
Also they point out that historical people did both bad and good things, like Caesar, Qin shi Huang, Gustav Vasa. (except the Danes, they are all satans minions!)
In fact we got a question if we thought that Qin was a good or bad emperor on our last test.

[General Appo]

Also they point out that historical people did both bad and good things, like Caesar, Qin shi Huang, Gustav Vasa. (except the Danes, they are all satans minions!)
In fact we got a question if we thought that Qin was a good or bad emperor on our last test.

Gustav Vasa doing bad things? Surely you must be joking! The man who rode around the world on a sleigh, swam in poop, dodged thousands of evil danes, resisted horrible torture, braved unknown waters, fought trolls and ogres, slaughtered dragons and drank the entire clergy under the table couldn´t possible have done anything bad at all. Liar!

What´s slightly amusing (though of course rather sad too) is the massive amount of people they (or pretty much all chinese rulers) manged to kill in their days. Far surpass any European tyrant, and even the worst Russians fall behind. Though to be honest they did have a bit of an unfair advantage what having about 20 times as many people under their rule.
Seriously, compared to what was before, the Cultural Revolution looks like a tea-party gone slightly wrong.

[Zeibek]

The stories in this thread are so bad it makes my own school look good! At least we got to learn about the first civilisations (Egypt, Babylon) and the Chinese dynasties.

We "learnt" about the first civilizations as well. That means that the teacher just divided us into groups and we did a presentation about one. After that we watched a a series of films where Lord Kenneth Clark talks about what he considers to be civilization. During the dark ages and before the Renaissance that means Christianity. Pagan Slavs and Vikings? Merely filthy barbarians hardly worth mentioning. The Islamic Golden Age taking place at the same time? Never heard of it. I hear that the series is very much respected, but the fact is it's about the history of art, which I find incredibly boring. And art does not equate civilization. How can one even talk about civilization without mentioning Mesopotamia or anything dating prior to the birth of Jesus!? Maybe the series was introduced to us in a bad context. I don't know. But it certainly turned off all my classmates about history. Which really is a shame.

I was glad with our test though. There was a simple list the following twenty events in chronological order and then a more interesting question about comparing the economic basis of two civilizations. I chose classical Greece and Achaemenid Persia. My text was of course nowhere near the level people here are used to but I sure as hell outshined my classmates.

[Connacht]

Well, we shouldn't blame people for not knowing, since most teachers don't know what they are talking about. Everything I know about history, mostly antiquity and WOII, I taught myself. But lets not be to hard on people who don't know about history. I bett I could ask you trivial questions on the subject of mathematics and physics and only a few would know the answer. Everybody has his own field of interest. Sadly this is mostly about utter crap.

It depends by the question.
I wouldn't blame anyone who doesn't know who were the Seleucians, or what was the Operation Tannenbaum, or when the Hell did the Moghal Empire rise, or who the duke of Alba was.
But I would surely put my hands on my hair in case of hearing somebody say that Alexander the Great was a relative of Charles the Great, or if somebody doesn't know where the Nazis passed in order to invade France, or think that Cina is on the Equator, or say that Achilles defeated the Turks.

"before the vikings there lived some people in Sweden who hunted deers and eat roots and couldn´t do jack shit".

Today some black/pagan/Viking metallers still do that.

but people who are into natural sciences rarely bother to learn even the most rudimentary historical facts.

My university faculty is biology and I always had interesting in history too, so I'm happy to be an exception. ^^'

[Majd il-Romani]

I always loved history and it was my favorite subject, especially the EB timeframe
Now I agree with Connacht when it is kindof unfair to ask someone "who was the 16th seleucid king" or "how many tribes were there in pre-roman britain and what were their names" but my friend and I were talking about politics and we got on the subject of nuclear weapons. I asked him who was the only country to use nukes?" he said Russia.
Me: No, it was Ameica
Him:Really?
Me: Yes. Do you at least know who we used it on?
Him:Russia
Me:no
Him:China?
Me: No, it was Japan!
Him: Oh, I knew that

and my friend is Egyptian, and he was reminiscing to us about his trip there over summer. One of his friends says "psh, big deal, Egypt, all you get to do is go in the sand and ride a camel.
I say "what about the Pyramids?"
Him: Okay thats it all of the rest of the country is all sand
Me:No
Him: Yah it is!
Me: Youve obviously neve heard of the NILE, have you?
Him: Okay, there's like one city by it, but the rest is all sand-
Me: It's the longest river in the world! One city! Which city?
Him: Luxor


its pathetic, really

[General Appo]

Well, if a person, no less an person from the US, has not heard of the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then that person is, and I say this with all possible respect about a person whom I have never meet and whom I know very little about, a complete retard. Indeed, a frightening retard. And that´s it. If it´s the school systems fault, then both the school system and this person is retarded. Simple as that.

[Connacht]

I would not mix up idiocy and simple ignorance, however. Two different things, imho.

[Zeibek]

My university faculty is biology and I always had interesting in history too, so I'm happy to be an exception. ^^'

*Sigh* I wish there more exceptions like you. Though my friend who is interested in physics at least tries to make and effort with history and in return I try not to fall asleep while he's getting all excited by the LHC (which is sadly enough now broken).

Most of my current classmates are very smart people, in no way ignorant. The main reason they don't bother with history is because they find it to be useless. "I'm never gonna do anything with it" is the most common answer I get when I ask them why the aren't interested. Fair enough, but most of them are never going to do anything with the math they are learning now as well, yet still no one looks down at studying long math.

Connacht said it well, don't mix idiocy with ignorance and simple ignorance with willful ignorance.

[Noncommunist]

Wow, I don't think my High School is that bad. However, I haven't really asked people what they know a year or so after their course. I'm guessing they probably forgot a good bit of it as a lot of people slept during class and only really paid attention in the study guides.

On the other hand, I remember meeting this English girl who hated Germany simply because Hitler ruled it and he was mean. I don't think she knew anything about it, not even where it was.

[Strategos Alexandros]

As I read this I just heard my sister, who is in high school, ask who won the first world war? and then to bring me even closer to a mental breakdown, is Everest in Scotland? Apologies if this is barely legible, I'm half asleep right now

[Rodrico Stak]

My sister didn't know in what country Rome is.

I don't know anyone who can tell me when the first world war took place (the closest anyone has gotten was 1915-1919, only one year off). No one could name a general other than Pershing in that war.