[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

Yes, a busy morning. Will be stopping these pings any minute now.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
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-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
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[eleni121]

Thanks for the reference. Of course Euro centered historiography neglects the heroic African Christian resistance to Islam over the past 1300 years...especially in North and East Africa.

[Publius6961]

Jan Vansina, most famously, brought a sceptical, rational approach to the use of oral traditions as historical sources, much as Leopold von Ranke had brought a sceptical, rational approach to the use of written documents. Historians have always used oral sources, of course, but Vansina's approach represented a methodological advance that brought the use of oral sources up to the standards of the modern scientific history that began with Ranke. Vansina's breakthrough was followed by the increasing use of oral sources in other fields of history.

Herein lies the problem.
"Reconstituting" history is not like just "adding water".
It involves intimately the intention , the biases and the wishful thinking of the "reconstitutioner".

Regadless if his good intentions and expertise, that can never substitute for written documents created by the people whose history is being written. It is simply impossible.

Call it anything you want, but "history" it isn't.

[SunkenCiv]

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Black Spark, White Fire: Did African Explorers Civilize Ancient Europe? by Richard Poe hardcover Richard Poe on FR	Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes by Stephen Howe Africana list	The Black Pharaohs: Egypt's Nubian Rulers by Robert G. Morkot paperback Current News

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