Why do so many posters on YA believe that the history of Religion & Civilization stops in the Middle East?

Question

Have the religions and history of India, China, Japan, The Pacific Islanders and so many other ancient civilizations been buried beneathe the constant babble of the Christians?

Answer 1

one of the things that always bothered my in history classes during the "formal education" years was their europocentrality. africa and south america were mentioned in the context of colonization and the "far east" was also looked at from the european aspect, the "discovery" of routes to the far east, the opium wars, the raj's in india etc.
this trend was perhaps started with the roman empire where anything outside its borders was "barbarian" and to be "romanized", this was continued by the holy roman empire in the middle ages and by the european renaissance empires/colonizers and supported by the respective religions institutions of the time.

Answer 2

Not beneath the "babble of the Christians", but rather beneath our own self-importance. Such things are only marginally taught in most American schools, and certainly not required as college courses (unless you are a history major). Personally, I feel as if I was short-changed in my education - almost entirely in public schools. And I had some really excellent teachers in some really excellent small-town schools!

Our country demands that we learn about our own country's history. This is natural enough. Likewise each state. Our culture has, for the most part, arisen from Europe, so we also study that. Everything else is a crap shoot, and your lucky if you've ever even *heard* of the Ottoman Empire by the time you graduate high school. The histories of Asia and Africa? Forget it. A brief overview of their culture in something vaguely referred to as "social studies" is all we're likely to get. Even our classes on America dwell almost solely on what the European invaders did! Who learns more than the very basics about the Inca, the Maya, or the Iroquois Confederation?

It is not religion that makes so many of us Americans ignorant of other cultures and their histories. It is our education system.

Jim, http://www.jimpettis.com/wheel/