From:	Arcady arcady@***.net
Subject:	Spirit of the land and it's people
Date:	Tue, 20 Jul 1999 23:02:19 -0700

> civilizational
> disagreement. A civilization, in this class, was defined as "the largest
> grouping of people which can be termed without saying 'the entire human
> race'." There were 7 civilizations, based mainly upon religion
> and language:
> Western, Orthodox, Hindu, African, Latin American, Japanese, and Sinic.
> You will notice that race does not factor into it. I don't remember
where I
> heard this, but anthropologists have identified 3 racial groupings which
are
> VERY different: White, African, and Sinic. The other races around (Native
> American, Slavic, etc) are just "mixings" of those three races.

I would cut this down a bit.
Japanese and 'Sinic' are the same groups if as I believe Sinic refers to
east Asians like the Chinese.
Japanese culture is more borrowed from Chinese than Italian is from Roman.
They've had very high level trade between them for thousands of years and it
shows. Add in Korea and the similarities become extreme. They share the same
folk legends, similar dress, and similar languages (Korean for instance is
Chinese vocabulary with Japanese Grammar in about 60% of the language. And
all three have the same base for their number names). Many foods and
entertainments items are also shared with minor variations.


Western and Orthodox shouldn't qualify either. They're more similar than
many of the 'Sinic' groups... Such as Samoans and Mongolians...

I agree with the basic principle of there being a few 'greater'
civilizations; but the breakdown given is to Euro centric in it's
definitions.

As for there being 3 races, I disagree. Aborigines have been shown to be
genetically very different than any other group. Though if you must say
there are three races and not 4 they might come under white, but certainly
not under African or Sinic.


Arcady http://www.jps.net/arcady/ <0){{{{><
The Revolution will not be televised; it'll be emailed.
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