Great Civilizations of Ancient Worlds
July 16, 2008 4:25 AM   Subscribe

The ancient web 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.
posted by netbros (8 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
I am always looking for this kind of stuff. Great find! Thanks for posting this.
posted by RussHy at 4:58 AM on July 16, 2008


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.
posted by jbickers at 5:31 AM on July 16, 2008


Oh, HELL yes. Just in time to use in the upcoming school year! Thanks!
posted by absalom at 6:28 AM on July 16, 2008


Hmm, looks like you're onto something there, jbickers. More than a little plagiarism goin' on, it would appear. Not so cool.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:31 AM on July 16, 2008


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."
posted by puddsharp at 6:32 AM on July 16, 2008


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).
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:50 AM on July 16, 2008


It looks like the entire thing was ripped off... he even stole verbatim from the Armenian Embassy website. Armenia!


Also: No Sumer? Utter bullshit.
posted by logicpunk at 7:24 AM on July 16, 2008


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.
posted by julen at 10:01 PM on July 16, 2008 [2 favorites]


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