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To: Kermit
Yes, that is true.

Think about the 900s! The West itself was virtually unknown - a mere dream - known better in fairy tales than in fact - Arabic archaologists and scholars worked on rediscovering it and they preserved many ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts. By the time the Western barbarian armies began marching on Jerusalem the East's passion to study the West was really underway. By the 1200s, Turkish sultans began investing heavily in the exercise.

By the 1400s so much had been recovered that Westerners themselves began to earnestly pursue their own history. Accommodations relating to the transfer of libraries of ancient knowledge were formally established in Islamic and Christian Spain so that nothing would be lost. When a Moslem city would fall, Christian scribes would move in and start copying the books.

Recovery moved ahead nicely after that.

Whether Africans in Cameroon learn about their own history from the West or from their own sources is of no consequence. It is history, and no one can change it - only illuminate it!

The man whose name I use in FreeRepublic, "Muawiyah", had risen to power over the Arab Empire and discovered how to separate church from state in the furtherance of justice while Europeans did well to cluster around open fires in wattle and daub huts while picking lice - and thought themselves lucky.

Be proud that our West is able to give the people in Cameroon a picture of themselves. This is a privilege the West did without for nearly a thousand years.

4 posted on 08/17/2002 11:12:50 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: muawiyah
I was just looking through the slide show... still not done yet, but it's pretty interesting... Based on the maps and such, I'm more inclined to think now that these were actually built to protect FROM slave raiders and other not-nice people... they seem to cluster around and throughout a valley, and feature agricultural terraces still in use today by the people of the area (the Mafas)...
5 posted on 08/17/2002 11:22:04 AM PDT by Chad Fairbanks
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To: muawiyah

A pity the Arabs are still stuck in the 7th cntury.


10 posted on 12/12/2010 2:03:56 PM PST by Mmogamer (I refudiate the lamestream media, leftists and their prevaricutions.)
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