Why is Mongolia in and not Korea

[logintime]

mongolia got much of its culture from other civilizations, so korea > mongolia

And Korea didn't get large amounts of its culture from neighboring civilizations? Like, say, China and Japan? This is a pretty incredulous statement.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

Please don't remove Songhai.

There's a lot of great and interesting West African history that people don't even know exists, because education in both the Eastern and Western worlds completely disregard it.

As a result, people have much, much more knowledge about Aztecs or Inca, than they do about Ghana, Mali or Songhai, or Mansa Musa.

I think the rest of the world might show a lot greater concern and interest for the modern nations and people of Ghana and Mali and all of West Africa if they had some sense of history regarding the region, rather than simply writing them off as 'those perpetually undeveloped and impoverished countries.'

 

[Sonereal]

Please don't remove Songhai.

There's a lot of great and interesting West African history that people don't even know exists, because education in both the Eastern and Western worlds completely disregard it.

As a result, people have much, much more knowledge about Aztecs or Inca, than they do about Ghana, Mali or Songhai, or Mansa Musa.

I think the rest of the world might show a lot greater concern and interest for the modern nations and people of Ghana and Mali and all of West Africa if they had some sense of history regarding the region, rather than simply writing them off as 'those perpetually undeveloped and impoverished countries.'

I like Songhai (wouldn't want them removed either) but its because of how obscure they are is the reason IF a civilization was ever dropped, it would be Songhai.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

No, I understand what you mean. I just thought I'd mention that I really liked the fact that Songhai has been put in at all, since 99% of the time, everything else in the world ignores the fact that anything ever happened in West Africa. It's sort of a pet cause of mine.

 

[Kenric af Grashen]

I would have preferred Korea over Sian I don't understand why we got sian over nations that had previously been in the game

 

[pagh80]

No, I understand what you mean. I just thought I'd mention that I really liked the fact that Songhai has been put in at all, since 99% of the time, everything else in the world ignores the fact that anything ever happened in West Africa. It's sort of a pet cause of mine.

You might have some love for west african history, but i dont see it being more important to learn about than soo many other things.(maybe those 99% ignores it for a reason? )
Personally the only african country that deserved to be in this game is Egypt. The only reason there are more is cause Firaxis deemed it neessesary to have a decent amount of civs from each continent rather than picking the most important ones.

Much of out modern day living and philosophy comes from the greece history, from the ming dynasties, from the roman history and so on. Which countries in africa besides egypt have had a impact worldwide? The zulus is the other civ that comes close though.

 

[tifa9292]

i wonder when the expansion packs with korea is coming out
maybe next year

 

[Sonereal]

I would have preferred Korea over Sian I don't understand why we got sian over nations that had previously been in the game

Because Siam was the only southeast Asian nation not to be colonized by European powers unlike Korea, which was occupied by Japan and wasn't really released until Japan went down to other powers. Korean influence has largely been focused on the peninsula it exists on.

 

[tifa9292]

Because Siam was the only southeast Asian nation not to be colonized by European powers unlike Korea, which was occupied by Japan and wasn't really released until Japan went down to other powers. Korean influence has largely been focused on the peninsula it exists on.

korea wasn't colonized by japan. only annexed for less than 40 years

 

[Wuzetian]

korea wasn't colonized by japan. only annexed for less than 40 years

Glad you're back to business tifa
The whole thread is never the same without you

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

Much of out modern day living and philosophy comes from the greece history, from the ming dynasties, from the roman history and so on. Which countries in africa besides egypt have had a impact worldwide? The zulus is the other civ that comes close though.

You could easily remove the Aztecs and Iroquois for the same reasons. The only really relevant impact they had were as speed bumps to colonialism. Korea could be written off as largely negligible in the same manner.

West Africa's trade with Europe and the Middle East was actually quite significant, and was one of the early avenues through which Islam was spread.

You have to really be careful with the "well, we never studied them, so it must not have been very important" line of thought, because it goes both ways; "I don't think they're very important because we never studied them."

You see the same sort of situation when people talk about "the Dark Ages." The Dark Ages were only really dark for a small segment of the world. It's fine to use that term to describe an era of European history, but people in the West often use it to describe the entirety of several centuries.

Historical education is very, very dependent on how and where you get it, and there's often a lot of surprises when you research deeper. A lot should be reexamined. But in the meantime, parts of history like West Africa, or Korea, and even West or Central Asia virtually don't exist in any study of World History, up until you get to college level education. There are a lot of very educated people in the West who couldn't give you a single fact about Korea from any point history before the end of World War 2. How much does anyone know of Carthage that doesn't involve 'that time they fought the Romans?' The same for Persia and the Greeks.

The Middle East has previously been the most dramatic example of this, but it's slowly becoming better. Most people have some vague image of Arabia derived from Disney's Aladdin and other stories, and then have the modern vision of an Islamic Middle East. More and more, people are becoming acquainted with the notion that the Middle East had a much, much larger influence on culture, science, language, philosophy and economics than most of the world largely acknowledged, long before Islam and Oil, but even since then too.


Again, this is a personal quibble, but I really dislike seeing people write off parts of 'obscure' parts of history, since what is 'obscure' and what isn't is largely dependent upon our modern society and our own perspective. Sorry if the post was too long.

 

[Blitz47]

Can you name one or two of these influences? I can't think of any.

I think I read one study citing how much Mongolian gene is in the Eurasia population, due to all the rape and pillaging done by the Mongolian during their conquest. They ravaged so many civilizations, it's not even funny.

Mongolians themselves do not have very "high culture" so various "branches" of Mongolian were kinda assimilated into various cultures, such as Turkish, and even "Indian". Mongols ruled Russia for quite a while. Mongols ruled China the least amongst all the remnant of the Mongolian empire left by Ghenghis Khan. A lot of Turkish captains claim descendant of Ghenghis Khan or some other Mongols later in their claim to "power." (source is from professor McNeil's "A world history").

Mughal empire ruled Indian for a long time. Mongol also conquered Afghanistan/Bactria(Greek empire left over from Alexander, forgot which Alexander general established it) empire, which not a lot of civilizations have done as that place is fairly tough for invaders (Alexander, Persian/Sassania/Mongols and I think Temur the Lame conquered that area but that might be about it)

Mongols promoted trade so its influence is quite a bit. Remember Marco Polo visited Mongol's court in China, the Yuan dynasty

mongolia got much of its culture from other civilizations, so korea > mongolia

sorry, if i offend anyone mongolia

You might want to read up on other versions of "history." While I understand your patriotism and pride in your culture, your statements contain some glaring....."distortions".

Koreans borrowed heavily, mostly from China. I believe Caligraphy wasn't invented in Korea but in China. While Korea did invent the turtle ship and Korea is rightly proud to have survived between two big powerful neighbors, China and Japan in the past few hundred years, and survived against Manchu and others before as well. The problem is we have Japan, China, Siam and India representing Asia already. If I have to pick a tth civilization, it'll be Mongolian as Mongols left a much larger imprint on human history in the world. I think after China, Japan and India, I will probably pick Mongolian, then Korean, then perhaps Khmer over Siam but that's another story and my preference is based on my limited understanding of the history of Asia and world.

While I agree Korean culture in general > Mongolian culture IF you only count "indigenous" culture. You may not want to hear this but based on what I read and learned, the biggest Korea influence is actually in Japan. Of course, Japanese and Koreans don't seem to want to admit to that but I was puzzled when I was confronted with some weird problems. I was told Japan borrowed from China heavily, but when I studied Japanese, the sounds does not seem to be from Chinese. After some digging at my college library, I discovered while Japan did send emissary and even scholar to China to study Chinese culture directly (one Japanese scholar even passed a Chinese Mandarin exam, which was no small feat), a good portion of the Chinese borrowing in Japan was probably indirectly through Korea.

Korean and Japanese also share a lot of similarities linguistically speaking. When I spoke with my Korean friends (some of them did not come to USA until college to study), I noticed even more interesting discrepencies. According to my Japanese professor, who did not come here until graduate school, the Korean leader who was mentioned in japanese highschool history textbook was Kim Il Sung, who is the dictator of North Korea. Apparently, Kim Il Sung caused a lot of grief for the Japanese during the Japanese occupation & colonization of Korea and earned a spot in Japanese history book. However, my friends from South Korea seem to be oblivious to that. I think I would trust the Japanese more on that matter.

Disclaimer: I only speak a few words and phrases in Korean so most of my Korean knowledge and history are from my Korean friends + pretty much entirely from English sources that I could find at various times when I was searching for some answers. It is too hard to find sources in other languages because I am in USA and not to mention the effort required to learn another language to read in that source

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

In addition to the points Blitz47 made, the Mongolians also, at numerous points in history, were a foil to other empires, and either outright conquered many empires, or destabilized them enough that they collapsed on their own.

Culture or not, being conquered by or attacked by another civilization always has a dramatic effect on that area's society in the future.

 

[Blitz47]

You might have some love for west african history, but i dont see it being more important to learn about than soo many other things.(maybe those 99% ignores it for a reason? )
Personally the only african country that deserved to be in this game is Egypt. The only reason there are more is cause Firaxis deemed it neessesary to have a decent amount of civs from each continent rather than picking the most important ones.

Much of out modern day living and philosophy comes from the greece history, from the ming dynasties, from the roman history and so on. Which countries in africa besides egypt have had a impact worldwide? The zulus is the other civ that comes close though.

I think it's too simplistic to say much of modern day living and philosophy came from greek, roman, Chinese and so on. India contributed quite a bit to the world, from religion to "zero" (although there's some debate who invented zero). Same with middle east.

Arabs most likely took alchemy from the Chinese Daoist, improved upon it, then passed to the Europeans and gave us chemistry.

It's quite likely imperial government system came from middle east, when the Mesopotamian and later Assyrian, Babylonian refined how to keep a large enough military force living off the king's $$$ and keep the local population "behaving" and pay taxes. Although the middle east divided up the task of military + priests while the Egyptian merged the king + religion together, we see how those systems influence the development in Europe, where the kings need to justify their power, how they can have power to rule over people.

I would argue Zulu probably have less influence than say Carthage/Mali/Songhai to Europe overall. Zulu bursted onto European history due to Zulu war, which is farily "recent" and did not last that long. Europe's "engagement" with western Africa was a lot longer, from the Phonecian/Carthage time to Arab/Islam/Moors, etc. etc.

Personally, I would love to learn more about Central Asia and African history for different reasons. We seem to have been heavily influenced by events in central Asia, where many barbarian invasions altered European, middle east, and Asia history. The problem is those pastoralist don't really have written language to leave something behind for us to study later, unlike the middle eastern, Asian (China, India, although India's Sanskrit culture is another interesting study and I was told by my Indian friends that some Indian dialect that is based on Sanskrit did not evolve so they use English for more modern concepts, rather than inventing their own terms in their respective Indian dialect). I believe humans came from Africa so I would like to know about African history more. Alas, I don't speak any African language so I have to rely on sources that studied Africa.

 

[Sonereal]

korea wasn't colonized by japan. only annexed for less than 40 years

That's even worst. A minor nation on a relatively unimportant peninsula sandwiched between the two greatest imperial powers of southeast Asia was annexed by Japan and hasn't been unified since. That's the big problem.

 

[Becephalus]

Umm Korea has been a glorified colonial plaything of China and Japan for the majority of its history. It is much less worthy than Spain or Mongolia. I am sure it will be included eventually because the Korean market is so large, but it is not a pressing issue.

Personally I think I would rather see the Phonecians/Carthaginians back in first.

 

[Wuzetian]

@Blitz
How nice to see you again Blitz. You know how I love to read your post about all kinds of history. BTW I'm still reading "the jungle" if you'd remember it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jagdtigerciv View Post
Mongolia shaped history in a way unimaginable in today's context. Much of what we understand as Chinese culture today was dramatically shaped by Mongolia and, later, Manchu influences.
Can you name one or two of these influences? I can't think of any.

I understand that Mongolians did conquer a large portion of Eurasia and built a (or several) glorious empire at its peak. And the influence of which is truly undeniable.
But in my original post I was asking about "the Chinese culture today that was dramatically shaped by Mongolia". I have no clue about this arguement since as you know the Chinese assimilates almost everything so completely that I can think of barely any such influence.

 

[Justicex]

It's unfortunate to say, but in North America at least, the thing people remember most about Korea is the Korean War. Ask the average joe about Korea and that is probably what you'll get. Ask the average joe about the mongols, and you'll get a little more than that.

My suggestion to you is, especially since I am sure you are not alone in your beliefs, make a request in the creator section. Or, scan some of the tutorials and possibly be able to make it yourself for others to enjoy

 

[Wuzetian]

I am sure it will be included eventually because the Korean market is so large, but it is not a pressing issue.

I agree.

But funny you should mention the market influence on the game.
So if that is the rule to choose which civ gets in and which gets out, we wouldn't be seeing any of the ancient civs,would we?
I think civ4 did a respectable job in selecting civs. It is quite balanced IMO.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

One thing to consider is to also be a little sensitive sometimes when talking to people about this subject when relating to their native country.

MOST people in the world have trouble simply ignoring the history and information they've understood for most of their lives. Learning history as a Korean person in Korea is much different than learning history as a British person in the UK. Heck, learning history as a white person in the United States is very different than learning history as a black person in the United States. If you come on too harshly or if you're insensitive, most people will just shut you out and ignore anything else you say. People really have a strong reflex towards being told that something they understand is incorrect or distorted.

So you have to be sort of delicate when peeling back layers of situational bias. In the United States, the common and accepted version of American History, as short as it is, among non-historians is hilariously inaccurate. There's a lot of mythology surrounding the birth of the country, and there's a lot of white-washing regarding WW1, WW2 and the Cold War. Mention the Barbary Wars at all, and you're likely to get a blank stare.

It's very similar in other countries, especially for topics like Armenian genocide. I have spoken to people from Turkey who will swear up and down that it never happened at all, or that it was simply a relocation effort where some people happened to die.