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In reply to the discussion: Rep. Steve King wonders what ‘sub-groups’ besides whites made contributions to civilization [View all]Cal33
(7,018 posts)the Bible as "Mesopotamians." Today, it's called "Iraq." Over many centuries, the written
language spread west, mainly through trade. Each country made some changes to
better fit into their own language.
The first Europeans to acquire a written language were the Greeks, who learned
it from the Semitic people, with whom they were trading. And the Romans learned
about the written language from the Greeks. The Romans civilized the rest of
Western Europe (notice that whether it's English, French, German, Scandinavian...
we all use the same alphabet). And Greece civilized the rest of Eastern Europe.
The Scandinavian nations were the last to acquire their written language -- they
had no written history until only about 1000 years ago.
The modern numerical system 0 to 9 came from the Arabs. And higher mathematics
also began with the Arabs, who invented "algebra."
With the Roman system of I, V, X, L, C, D, M, the highest functions that can be
achieved are multiplication and division. And even these simple arithmetical
functions are extremely troublesome to do. No higher math was possible without
the abstract ideas of the zero and the decimal point.
As written by someone in a previous post, each new culture is built upon the
foundations of earlier cultures. I might add, that as we go back in history, it seems
that other cultures were the Numero Uno in the past, and that each culture had its
time at being Number One.
People like Rep. Steve King, who are so eager to pat themselves on the back,
display an ignorance of history, not to mention a lack of good manners and common
etiquette.