Monday, June 11, 2018
Not Out of Africa (Four Stars)
In this book we look at Afrocentrism and how the left promoted a radical view of ancient history... radical in that it proposes that Egypt, and not the Greeks were the forebearers of Western Civilization.
Although written in the 1990s Ms. Lefkowitz's book examines some of the ills of modern academia, mainly historical revisionism and cultural appropriation. She does an excellent job of skewering the arguments that the Egyptians originated many of the philosophical and religious ideas attributed to the Greeks, pointing out problems of timelines and the weak arguments that so-and-so COULD have been Egyptian, etc. She also sinks the idea of "cultural appropriation" by asking a simple question: how can a culture be "stolen?" A culture can no more be stolen than an idea can.
The scariest part of this book was how no professors of ancient history publicly challenged afrocentric speakers on their so-called facts. We are seeing much the same kind of "pass" being given to Islamofascists who are being invited to speak at college campuses about civil rights.
The Egyptians have a great number of accomplishments they can claim as their own... there is no reason why the heritage of Plato et al has to be given to them as well.
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