I don't know if I agree with his anecdote about Bolivia and pretty much any other country in Latin America or Africa that uses its pre-colonial history as a rallying cry. That happens pretty often and the circumstances and fairly similar. Plus, if the choice is between using the time period before your ancestors were exploited by the Europeans or using the time period it was happening, I think it's pretty obvious which one you are going to go with politically.
I sincerely doubt population was the reason historians initially ignored Africa and the Americas. I'm pretty sure that has more to do with the fact that historians were European males that did not see the savages of Africa and Americas as having a culture or civilization to study.
Strayer is missing something huge about Africa by not talking about their special cows. Or the elephants? Who doesn't want to talk about elephants?
I do hope at some point Strayer will go into some detail about the rise of Islam in North Africa, because hearing the end of a civilization occurred due to Islam, but not understanding how exactly that happened is starting to irk.
Mesoamerica sounds a lot like Egypt spiritually and not just because they both built pyramids. They had a wide variety of gods, their leaders served as both a mediator between heaven and earth as well as a ruler. They both buried their leaders with sacrifices of animals and humans.
My question is how did the Chavin know about the Amazon basin if they were up in the mountains? And why are you not discussing the fact that they hung out in the Amazon River basin?
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