Ahimsadharma
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2007
- Messages
- 145
Well, if Tenochtitlan just gets slaughtered it becomes Mexico. Geographical definitions are just that
This is a euro-centric perspective, really. Most non-european cultures consider the history of their land as their's, not a question of "our history starts when this tribe migrated here/barged in" but " this is the history of me and my land".
Perhaps this is because Asiatic/African history is far older than European ( civilization did afterall exist in these locales for 5000-6000 years before it spread to Europe) and it has seen far more ancient migrations and/or intermingling.
Perhaps your view is a result of racial undertones to European history ( Europe tends to define history through race, while rest of the world defines it through land) and a far more fundamentally flawed perspective.
This is because, one really has very little idea what their ancestors looked like/were or hell, who their ancestors really were.
Take for example you- You are, i presume, Polish. According to you, Polish history starts after Atilla (when the slavs moved there)simply because you identify with the slavic people.
But no race is 'pure' and concepts of racial purity might hold true in some extreme areas or small isolated pockets, but on a long enough timeline, almost everyone intermingled with everyone.
Can you, for example, say that when the Slavs moved into Poland, there was not a single Hun left ? Can you garantee that not a single Pole married/raped/impregnated a Hun or vice-versa ? Obviously, logic and common sense dictates that if you arrive into a new land, short of genocidal extermination, you don't end up avoiding mixing. And even then, you cannot avoid mixing on a societerial level - look at the last 500 years for eg: the colonisation of the new world ( Australias & Americas) by Europeans has resulted in these regions having the largest mixed population ( Latin America) and even highly racist/genocidal societies like USA/Australia have not managed to avoid intermingling.
So on that record, whether you like it or not, their history is also your history.
This is why a civilization/culture-based definition is a far more visible and robust definition than a 'people/race based' definition.
In short, Hunnic history of Poland is very much history of Poland- every bit as much as Slavic history of Poland.
I guess if your historical awareness of your own people went back to 7000/8000 years at the minimum, you'd see the futility in trying to define civilizations by 'race/clan of people' instead of as a culture.
I am an Indian( from eastern parts of India) and i know most of Indian history for the last 6000-7000 years. If i tried to find any cogent meaning of 'who my people are' as a race/clan, it'd be a futile exercise because it involves atleast 5 major different ethnic migrations/mixings and numerous intermingling due to us being a very trade-based society.
You will find that if you were to discover the history of any people ( barring exception cases of people stuck in remote/isolated locations) for the last 7000-8000 years, everyone is mixed with half a dozen or more other 'tribes/groups' that are now impossible to follow/date, given that it'd be like trying to differentiate cavemen societies.