The Atlas of World History: From the Beginning to Alexander the Great
McEvedy
1970
Submitter: Weeding my high school library, where the non fiction books average an age of 1986, I found this in the history section. I flipped through it and it seemed pretty decent for being published in 1970 and White American centric, but then I saw this map and read the text accompanying it. It seems pretty racist even for 1970s.
Holly: Ouch, 1986? You have your work cut out for you, Submitter. Good catch on this one.
I took one look at the illustration and instantly became like Beaky Buzzard in the Merrie Melodies cartoons, “Nope, nope, no no no no, nope nope!” 🙂
So many of these books belong in the section non Non-Fiction Fiction. Right there next to, I mean inside the dumpster OR in the, I mean under the landfill. The books are such crimes, under the jail.
Footnote 1 there is really confuzing without the first column of the facing page.
Yeah, it looks like it’s saying the “minor races” are egg-laying.
The terminology was correct for the time, except “browns” and “yellows” were Not On even then. The latter should have at least said “Orientals”, because I’m old enough to remember 1970 and that’s what they were politely called.
Of course the paleohistory facts are all wrong; certainly the quoted bit about the peopling of the New World is, so probably also is the Australian (who at least got a proper name). And of course, the Neanderthal info’s just as out of date, not to mention everything before Homo habilis, including all the Australopithecus species.
I dread to think how Eurocentric and manifest destiny the rest of the text is. You know they aren’t mentioning Great Zimbabwe and the Harrapans much, nor Gobeli Tekli.
Submitter, you’re doing the Lord’s work by getting rid of all this old crap. Better to have none of this than so many old books. I bet you’re going to come across plenty of craptastic crafts!
This reminds me of a class in high school where we had to learn the races: Caucasian, Negroid, Mongoloid. This was in late 1992, so it was racist at that time too. Our teacher cautioned us not to get confused with the other definition for Mongoloid (also not appropriate then or now). The kicker was that this wasn’t even a social studies class, it was home ec.
Bilberry, did you go to school in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district?
What on Earth did any of that have to do with Home Ec? Was it so you could tell if you were in a miscegenationous relationship?
Maybe the Home Ec teacher didn’t want them cooking that newfangled “fusion cuisine”?
Da fuq?
Not sure what home ec was doing teaching anthropology with terms that were out of date long before 1992.
Just needed to get some old-timey racism in there, I guess.
My father remembered having to learn the names of the IQ bands: idiot, moron, imbecile, feebleminded, normal, … not sure if there were others.
I was born in 1974, all I mostly remember about the decade is listening to my Chipmunks Punk record and watching reruns of The Flintstones.
And all I wish I could remember from the 21st century is watching cat videos on YouTube and playing Animal Crossing. Maybe when the dementia sets in.
Sorry, I meant Bibberly
The book is very outdated and needs to go. Ideally science and history books should be weeded as often as the celebrity biographies.
This is so bad! “History” indeed….good job weeding this one. It truly belongs in the hall of shame – or a landfill.
Wasn’t the land bridge theory fully debunked?
Yeah, but not definitely till post-1986. And considering the terminology here, no way were they up on the latest theories.
People used the land bridge even after some others had come other ways.