this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 14 hours ago

Arabic numerals came to Europe from India via Arabia. The Sine function does too, but it's name is garbled and doesn't mean anything.

Venetian blinds came from Persia via Venice.

Spanish Flu was everywhere, but everyone at the time was lying about it due to being at war, except for Spain.

Many First Nations peoples are known by what other peoples called them (often pejorative names) rather than their name for themselves.

Words usually aren't authoritative declarations of truth, but rather snapshots of what was a useful distinction to someone somewhere a some time. Did the French think their style of kissing was a unique cultural phenomenon? Will Skibidi be known about in 500 years? No one documents graffiti, was it "discovered" by Pompeii?

We live in a truely unique age, where nearly any question can have a relavent answer of some kind in moments. We can see people streaming everyday things from around the globe, or find the best research about what we know about ancient people's daily lives. Is any of this worth carving into a monument though? How many copies of an archeological journal are going to survive the ages vs copies of Game of Thrones? I'd say there are countless things about our lives we think are special to today that even prehistoric people did, it just isn't notable enought to build monuments to or copy manuscripts of.