
Iran's Wolf Wall, Second-Longest in the World, Is Still Shrouded in Mystery - curtis
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2018/07/27/gorgan-wall-iran-second-longest/#.W1vFmRZE2Ec
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xeromal
Iran is definitely under-represented in western education. I came across this
the other day.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l)

Iranians constructed these deep structures that engineered in a such a way to
grow ice in the winter and keep the ice for the entirety of summer. They made
a kind of sorbet as a dessert.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faloodeh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faloodeh)

Thanks for sharing this! Great read!

~~~
zaarn
To my knowledge, a countries education tends to focus on the country itself.

American education teaches a lot about the US but little about the history of
specific European countries and in turn EU countries teach little about
American history ( IIRC during my education we covered the entirety of the US
history in half a year and then went back to more local history )

It's always quite amazing to realize that other countries mostly have just as
much of a rich history as your own.

~~~
Radim
Understandable, but also somewhat proportional? There's 250 years of US
history vs thousands of years for many European countries. Of course you need
more time to cover that.

On topic: Iran is an absolutely stunning country. Second to none with respect
to its nature, people and history. What happened there with the Arab conquests
(and especially since the Islamic Golden Age), their sad and unsuccessful
struggles for independence, is a crying shame. But still one of the proudest,
most beautiful regions of the world.

~~~
joshvm
Aside from the fact that Columbus sailed over in 1492... This only serves to
highlight the problem even more - 250 years represents what you might call
"modern" America, i.e. the post-Columbian era.

Native American history is tens of thousands of years old and we learn very
little at school (in Europe) aside from the stereotypes that the film industry
and other cariacatures afford. I think we learned a bit about Columbus in the
UK (I assume Spain does a better job)? We never learned about South America
_at all_ , save that it was something to do with why we kept looting Spanish
ships. Neither did we learn about the Middle East which seems bizarre, given
its role in early civilisation.

Europeans are (largely) either descendants of one of the ancient empires or
were significantly affected by them through conquest. The native Americans (in
both hemispheres) were on the receiving end of European conquest and had their
culture decimated or plundered. There's also a lot of very visible (and
impressive) Roman, Egyptian and Greek culture lying around to visit, not to
mention extensive written histories of all three. While there are similar
sites in the Americas, there are fewer and they're often less visible or are
quite inaccessible.

~~~
e12e
While there's certainly a gap in the teaching of other cultures in most (all?)
modern education, do note that (here from Wikipedia): "History (...) is the
study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring
before written record are considered prehistory. It is an umbrella term that
relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection,
organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these
events."

To the best of my knowledge, there's a limited written record from the North
America prior to the invasion (" discovery") - apart from in Norse sagas
chronicling the viking arrival around 1000 AD (and while the sagas are an
important source, they're hardly known for their reliability, in part because
of the often long gap between events and when the sagas were first written
down).

Both south and north American indigenous civilizations were AFAIK largely
without a written record.

~~~
AlotOfReading
That is a controversial definition that many academics criticize because of
the ridiculous questions it raises. Most Archaeologists and anthropologists
use broader definitions of history that encompass a whole host of non-literary
sources precisely because it's stupid to discuss whether Americans became
historic the second someone happened to write about them in 1492 or if
linear-a tablets need to be translated before Minoans are considered
historical.

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potopoto
This structure is impressive but I'm surprised the longest wall in the world
is not even mentioned in western education

The walls of Benin were 4 times longer than the wall of China:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Benin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Benin)

The ignorance of this structure is partially due to the racism of the time and
Britain's determination to erase Benin from history:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Expedition_of_1897](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Expedition_of_1897)

~~~
Eupolemos
Gotta love Benin's flag:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Benin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Benin)

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jaza
Fascinating, I had never heard of this wall before. There are also numerous
impressive and under-explored archaeological sites north east of Golestan, in
modern day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, see this overview of them that I wrote
a few years ago: [https://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2014/10/forgotten-realms-
of...](https://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2014/10/forgotten-realms-of-the-oxus-
region/)

~~~
nafey
Personally I have felt that the fascination of Western archaeologists with
Roman History is explained by the necessity of the American "aristocracy" to
establish a cultural heritage of exceptionalism. This has led to an extremely
detailed view of Roman History.

The history of other regions and civilisations serve no such similar purpose
and have been ignored.

~~~
olavk
This is not something particular to America. Europeans have always stressed
the continuity from antiquity. The pope uses the title "Pontifex Maximus"
which was one held by Ceasar. Emperors (like the Holy Roman Emperor and the
Zar) claimed to be the legitimate emperor of Rome. The Enlightenment thinkers
were also heavily inspired by Rome and Greece, although preferred republican
Rome to the time of the emperors.

The reason we know so much about Rome and Greece is that we have a lot of
written material - histories, literature, poetry, letters, laws etc.
Archeology is a relatively new science, while history (the study of written
accounts) have existed since antiquity.

History is not just a question of what happened, but also about the effect of
what happened. For example the Egyptian or Sumerian literature and philosophy
might be just as magnificent as the Roman, but since those languages were lost
it simply did not have the same effect on subsequent culture as Rome had.

~~~
ghein
The Romans were claiming a link to the Trojan war in their origin myths!
Prominent Romans would "discover" an ancestral link to a named hero...

While the Japanese Royal Family claimed descent from a God.

~~~
olavk
And not only Romans! According to the Icelandic historian Snorre Sturlason,
Thor and Odin (the Norse gods) were actually Trojans nobles which ended up in
Scandinavia, and the Danish royal family descends from them. According to
Geoffrey of Monmouth, the first settler in England was a descendant of Aeneas,
the Trojan prince which founded Rome. And of course, the Trojan royal family
ultimately descends from the Gods, and the mother of Aeneas was Venus.

In other words, the Danish royal lineage descends from both Norse _and_ Greek
gods.

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casefields
Here's another thorough article:
[http://www.shca.ed.ac.uk/staff/supporting_files/esauer/irani...](http://www.shca.ed.ac.uk/staff/supporting_files/esauer/iranian_walls.pdf)

~~~
melicerte
thanks for sharing. This is more interesting and more detailed than the
original post.

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Alir3z4
If you enjoy that, you may like "a masterpiece of creative genius", the
[Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System][0] as well, it's one of its kind and
I'm still amazed how and using what technology they were able to make tunnels
and canals into the rock under the city, of course how they did stop the
stream until they finished the construction.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shushtar_Historical_Hydraulic_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shushtar_Historical_Hydraulic_System)

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DiabloD3
Although this article is very interesting, the author seems to have very
little knowledge of Middle Eastern history.

~~~
raarts
If someone made such a statement about an article you wrote, wouldn't you want
to see it substantiated?

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haloux
Gorgon, also the species of Medusa. . .

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon)

