OUR HISTORY SAYS THAT EVERYTHING WAS INVENTED IN THE GARBAGE DUMP | 2003-09-20
Great Civilizations are the garbage heaps of history. Egypt got iron from the invading Hittites, who smashed their heads in with it. They got the wheel from the Hyksos, who rode over them with it.
But the Hittites who invented iron were on the move. So were the Hyksos. So we found the first wheel in Egypt and said that Egypt invented it. The earliest iron we found was in Egypt, so it was assumed for a long time that Egypt invented iron.
Those clothes of the fair-skinned mummies in China were wearing were of a type that was first found in the Middle East a thousand years after those Caucasians in China died. So until twenty years ago official history said that those clothes were invented in the Middle East.
The Great and Ancient and Mysterious acupuncture that was a product of the Chinese Great Civilization turns out to have been in Europe a thousand years earlier, and Lord knows how long before that.
Conservatives marvel and drool over the "Great Inventions" of China, too. The Chinese invented movable type long before Europe did. They used it to print some playing cards and then forgot it. They invented gunpowder, then forgot how to make guns. A Chinese gentleman named Sung invented a mechanical clock. It disappeared, and they didn't build two.