Comments on: Great Civilizations of Ancient Worlds

Great Civilizations of Ancient Worlds

netbros — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:25:46 -0800

is an online resource for students, teachers, and anyone interested in the cultures of the ancient world. With the Olympics fast approaching, here is an opportunity to learn more about the past 4500 years of Chinese civilization. Or how the Celtiberians would get drunk and eat raw meat before going to war. 24 ancient civilizations in all.

By: RussHy

RussHy — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:58:46 -0800

I am always looking for this kind of stuff. Great find! Thanks for posting this.

By: jbickers

jbickers — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:31:41 -0800

Anyone else suspicious of all of this wealth of unattributed content? A little Googling reveals that this page is strikingly similar to this; likewise here and here, and here and here.

By: absalom

absalom — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:28:48 -0800

Oh, HELL yes. Just in time to use in the upcoming school year! Thanks!

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:31:33 -0800

Hmm, looks like you're onto something there, jbickers. More than a little plagiarism goin' on, it would appear. Not so cool.

By: puddsharp

puddsharp — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:32:23 -0800

You can tell which content wasn't stolen. "Ancient Irish history and legends have come down to us through history thanks to the diligent chronicling of the early Christian monks."

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:50:31 -0800

absolom writes: Oh, HELL yes. Just in time to use in the upcoming school year! From the site: "The Chinese Were The First To Use Gunpowder, Yet They Did Not Capitilize On It's Use Militarily." I dunno, absolom... unnecessary capitalization + spelling errors + punctuation errors are probably not what you want to be handing your students (I note your profile page lists "educator" as your occupation).

By: logicpunk

logicpunk — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:24:37 -0800

It looks like the entire thing was ripped off... he even stole verbatim from the Armenian Embassy website. Armenia! Also: No Sumer? Utter bullshit.

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:18:46 -0800

he even stole verbatim from the Armenian Embassy website. Well, yeah, but who remembers the Armenians?

By: julen

julen — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:01:29 -0800

By copying random (but notable in several cases) websites, he's presenting a pretty skewy view of the ancient world. His Italy section, for example, is pretty bad. I wouldn't trust him for a complete picture, and I'm not sure I would trust him to know if the text he's copying is generally accepted history, speculation and supposition, or alternative ideas. It's very very unusual in the ancient/web arena to have a site that doesn't have an attribution or owner-determining details. In fact, the three I can think of were either plagiaristic like this one or so cuckoo that even the author didn't want to admit authorship. For decent ancient Chinese history information on the web, try: The History of East & Southeast Asia (it's an annotated and reviewed meta index that can direct your interest in a variety of aspects of Chinese history.) For decent meta indexes dealing with the ancient world on the web, try: Voice of the Shuttle (general index to humanities) Lacius Curtius (fabulous resource to the ancient Roman World) Tim Spalding's sites Exploring Ancient World Cultures There are dozens more of good meta-indices, of course, but these are fairly representative of some of the most popular ones out there.